Heirs to the Apocalypse
by ODST-127
Summary: Taking the leap from new kid to ruler of a school isn’t easy. Finding himself forced into the spotlight, can Jacen do what is required of him to ensure the schools survival? [Update]:Submitted to beta.
1. The New Kid

**A/N:** This is my first piece of fiction that I felt was any good, and with any luck the first of many. If you have any advice or criticism, I will gladly take it, but please be honest. I am particularly interested in correcting any problems with punctuation and format so I can make my work easier to read.

The beginning is a little slow, but I tried to make it interesting, but know that it was made that way to allow for a larger, more involved plot.

* * *

**Chapter 1: The New Kid **  
(January 4th ---3 months until Outbreak) 

Jacen Bennett paced back and forth along the hallway. He had arrived at twelve noon in hopes of being able to find his room with out running into anyone, but as he heard a bell ring in the distance, he knew that wasn't going to happen.

_Has it really been three hours_, Jacen asked himself, stressfully running a hand through his short brown hair_, I have to be missing something; the highest number I can find in this place is 200 and my dorm number is 227._

Jacen was so caught up in figuring out where his room was that he didn't hear to footsteps coming towards him and was very startled when the figure tapped him on the shoulder. He spun around and found himself looking at a girl almost as tall as himself at around five-eight, though maybe a year or two younger.

She smiled impishly. "Wow, somebody's a little jumpy… Sorry anyways, I didn't mean to startle you but you seemed lost so I thought that maybe you could use some help," the girl said in a lively and playful tone of voice.

Jacen was about to start talking but then stopped, realizing that although he had been looking in her direction, he had not actually paid any attention to the images his brain was receiving. He focused his full attention on her. She had a light but not pale skin tone with straight copper-red hair that went down to her elbows. During the time Jacen was taking her image in words like _cute_ kept popping up from his subconscious.

"Excuse me…" she added after waiting for Jacen to respond, letting the sentence trail off to catch his attention.

Jacen surfaced back into reality. The realization that he had zoned off made a blush rise, breaking through the tanned, sun burnt skin on his cheeks. "Oh, sorry about that… must have spaced out there for a minute."

The girl giggled."I said you looked lost," she replied, thoroughly enjoying his embarrassment.

He flashed a small playful grin, already over being embarrassed. "What makes you think I'm lost?"

She put her arm on her chin in the classic thinking pose. "Hmm, well I suppose the flip flops and the T-shirt kinda tipped me off."

_Wow she's a fiery one._ Jacen made gesture towards his shirt. "Oh that, well you see, I just flew in from Florida this morning and its rather warm th-"

She stopped him before he could continue. "And that would explain the second reason I figured you where lost…" She leaned over and whispered into his ear "this is the girl's dorm; anyone who has been here for any extended period of time would know that."

His blush returned with a vengeance. "Oh… crap, so... umm, where is the boy's dorm then?"

"Opposite side of the school."

"Ok, well thanks for-" Jacen stopped, noticing that the girl was listening to something else. Jacen tried to hear whatever had taken her attention, and then he heard it; footsteps. When she looked back at him a moment later she had a worried look on her face.

She spoke in a hurried tone; "Look, you have to leave now! Boys aren't supposed to be in the girl's dorm, you'll be in a lot of trouble if you're caught. There is an old stairwell down the hall to your left, at the bottom there is a door that will take you outside. No one uses it because the door is supposed to be linked to a fire alarm, but the alarm is broken. Now GO!"

Startled by the urgency in her voice Jacen turn and ran. As he was turning the corner into the stairwell he heard the girl call after him. "Oh by the way I'm Kelsey Weaver."

He stopped and leaned around the corner just enough so Kelsey could see his head and yelled back, "Jacen Bennett" and then raced down the stairs.

* * *

Jacen had left the girls dorm 10 minutes ago and what he could only assume was the boy's dorm had come into sight. He still hadn't gotten over his encounter with Kelsey. He couldn't get over it. _What a bad first impression_, Jacen told himself,_ I hope she knows it was an honest mistake; I mean how could I have known, I've never been to a boarding school before._

He had little trouble finding his room; it was halfway down the hall on the first floor, which was really the second floor because the first was the 'ground floor.' Jacen found the door unlocked and slightly ajar, through which he could hear a distinct zipping sound. _I haven't been here for more than a day and already someone is trying to steal my stuff._

Jacen ran in and at first thought that some sort of hairless gorilla had escaped from a local zoo, which was unlikely; zoo's are usually in cities and he was in a boarding school on the outskirts of Bestine, Pa, which was about a two hour drive north east of Pittsburgh. So Jacen assumed it was a man, but that didn't lessen how intimidated Jacen felt. The guy was huge at around six-six and was built like a tank; add in his jet black mohawk and you had someone you would not want to run into in a dark ally.

The anger Jacen had felt from seeing someone shift through his stuff fizzled instantly as the 'gorilla' stood up and looked at him. He pointed at Jacen's luggage, "this yours?"

Repressing the dread in the pit of his stomach, Jacen nodded. Before he could respond the 'gorilla' ran at him and closed the gap in between the two of them with surprising speed for a man of his size. Time seemed to stand still for Jacen as his short seventeen years of his life flashed by, and then the 'gorilla'…

…Enveloped him in a bone crushing bear hug. "Welcome to you're new home!" he exclaimed before letting Jacen go and putting out his right hand, "the names Dave, Dave Richards."

_Wasn't I just about to die? _Still rather confused, Jacen put his hand out and shook the boy's massive hand, "Im Jacen Bennett…" he paused and pointed at Dave's head, "and If I may ask, what's with the mohawk?"

Dave took a second and then put a hand on his head, finally realizing what Jacen was talking about. "Ohhh almost forgot about that, yeah... I lost a bet."

"Well anyway it's nice to meet you Dave, but if you don't mind I would like to have all my bags unpacked by nightfall." Jacen said wearily and then pointed to the bed which seemed less used. "I assume this is mine?"

He let out a short chuckle. "Yeah that's yours, dust and all."

Jacen picked up the closest suitcase and sat down with it on the bed, whereupon he began the arduous process of unpacking which, conveniently for Dave, blocked his view of the other suitcases which Dave began to rummage through. "What the …. Is, is this chain mail? What the hell do you have chain mail for?" Dave asked in an amused tone.

_No, it couldn't be… could it? _Jacen put down the toothbrush he was holding and leaned around the side of the open container to find Dave standing there holding up a full body suit made of thousands of interlinked titanium rings. "That's not chain mail, that's my shark suit," he replied matter-of-factly.

Dave shrugged, "What's the difference?"

"Let's put it this way, if a suit of chain mail were the equivalent to a hatchet than this shark suit would be a musket; its half the weight and twice as strong," he replied defensively before continuing with a large grin, "and as far as why its here… I guess my dad must have packed it as a memento, we went diving a lot together."

"Your parents packed your stuff for you?" Dave asked in a disapproving tone.

"You don't understand," exclaimed Jacen, worried he had already fallen out of favor with Dave, "I didn't even know I was coming here until last week; my parents packed for me so I could spend what time I had left there saying goodbye to all my friends."

Seemingly convinced by Jacen's explanation, Dave walked over to the window. "Well regardless, you're not going to get much use out of it. The only body of water for a ways is the Academy's mini-lake." Jacen tilted his head to the left slightly, Dave sighed, "No one ever gets that… I call it a mini-lake because it's too big to be a pond and too small to be a lake."

"Ooook…" Jacen said trying not to sound too insulting, "Well I'm going to get back to unpacking if th-"

"Look, you have plenty of time to unpack later; I've decided I'm going to introduce you to the guys," Dave said, interrupting Jacen mid-sentence. "Oh and bring the chai-… I mean shark suit, they'll get a kick out of that."

* * *

"Are you sure you're ok to go to school today?" Dave asked with a hint of guilt in his voice, "I doubt you are even in the attendance database yet, no one would notice." 

"No, no, that's ok; I'll just have one of those energy drinks I saved from George's last night," Jacen paused and let out a large yawn as took a can out of the room's mini-fridge. "You know that George… umm, what's his last name again?"

Dave sighed, "It's Havel, George Havel." George was a pleasant enough fellow with unusually thick dark brown hair… and based on his less then flattering physical state, Jacen figured he wasn't the athletic type. He had met George Havel late yesterday afternoon when Dave had taken him to see _the guys_, which consisted of Dave, George, his roommate Alex Stevens, and now apparently himself. George was the one who had greeted them at the door wearing a sweatshirt which simply had the word "L337" with an arrow pointing upwards towards his head.

For a moment Jacen frowned out of guilt for forgetting George's name again, but then recovered his optimistic yet tired look. It wasn't his fault; he just wasn't good at last names. _Among other things_, he added mentally. "Sorry about that, I was just going to say it was very nice of him to allow me to tag along with you."

Placing the can on the table, Jacen took a seat on his bed and bent over to put his shoes on. "What's up with Alex though? He hardly said a word the whole time."

"Don't be offended, that's just Alex, he is like the personification of quiet …" Dave paused; checking to make sure Jacen wasn't looking and then swiped the energy drink off desk. After putting the drink under the pillow, Dave continued; "He even moves quietly; I remember one time after a track race, one of the other runners walked by me and he was mumbling to himself about how he didn't hear or notice Alex catching up to him until Alex passed him."

Finished tying his shoes, Jacen sat up and reached for where his drink had been. "Hey! Gimme my energy drink back... It's not my fault I didn't get to bed until one." He added slyly, trying to make Dave feel guilty.

"Hey! I didn't know we would end up playing Halo for six hours." Dave replied defensively before quietly adding. "It's usually two to three hour's tops."

Jacen sighed, sensing he was not going to get anywhere. "Fine, you win but if I fall asleep on my first day of school then it's on your head," he said with a playful grin.

Off in the distance a bell rang. "That's the first bell, in five minutes the second bell will ring. The second bell means school has started." Dave nonchalantly grabbed his backpack and stood up. "I suggest we get going unless you want to be late for your first day."

* * *

Jacen let out a deep sigh of relief, grateful that the day was halfway over, and for the break lunch provided. It hadn't been bad for Jacen, he had been happy to find that Dave was in his English and Chemistry class, but it was tiring. _These classes are so much more advanced than the ones in Florida; I mean I know I'm up to it bu-_

"Well hello there…" a playful voice said from behind him. Jacen turned around and saw the not quite pale face of Kelsey Weaver. "… I see you escaped the girl's dorm unscathed," she finished, with an impish grin.

He stood there wordless for a moment while his brain rebooted. "Umm… Oh yes, yeah I got out ok. Thanks again for the help," Jacen finished as he tried to calm himself down. Historically he didn't have a good track record with girls, though when he thought back to his first encounter with Kelsey, he felt that he had done much better than usual, _definitely much better than I'm doing at the moment._

Kelsey folded her arms and gave him a knowing look. "You're not very good with girls, are you?" she asked, in a quiet, thoughtful voice.

He began to deny it, but thought better of it, and let out a troubled sigh. "You have no idea," he said sadly.

Her grin faded for an instant but was quickly replaced with a smile that seemed to reassure Jacen that everything was going to be ok. "Follow me; I think I know how to help you get over this." Jacen did his best to smile back, but doubted she could help him. _How could she possibly…_

Kelsey led him through the busy cafeteria at a slow, steady pace, weaving through the crowd. Jacen did the best he could to keep up but found himself having trouble trying to mimic the winding path and graceful movements that she was using to get around the people who stood in the way. He lost sight of her momentarily after a large senior moved into his path. Dodging around the senior he emerged from the crowd on the opposite side of the room and spotted the copper haired girl a couple of feet away. Stopping suddenly, she turned towards him and gave him that same impish grin, which he decided was her trademark, before turning back and walking directly towards a table of… _Wait... girls?_

Initially Jacen had felt betrayed but then quickly realized what she had planned. Kelsey put a hand on his shoulder as he approached the table. "Everyone…" she said loudly, gaining the attention of the whole table, "…This is my new friend Jacen. If it is ok with all of you, he will be sitting with us for the rest of the year." Jacen's tanned face reddened more and more, showing no indication of stopping. He could feel himself begin to zone out and knew he couldn't stop it. _I'm sorry Kelsey, I know you meant we_-. That was as far as he got before Kelsey took her hand off his shoulder and discretely elbowed him sharply in the ribs.

Jacen instantly came back to attention. "Umm" he said trying to compose his thoughts. "Hello, my name is Jacen Bennett; I just got here from Key West in Florida. It's very nice to meet you all," Jacen added enthusiastically.

Of the five girls at the table, three of them smiled warmly. One of the remaining two, upon seeing Jacen, began staring intently at her lunch and seemed to want to be invisible. The other, after seeing the first's reaction, shot Kelsey a near unnoticeable glare before giving Jacen a curt nod.

Kelsey sat down and signaled for Jacen to sit to her left. She watched him as he took his seat, clearly trying to see if she had done the right thing. He flashed a weak smile in response and began to rummage through his backpack for his lunch, which ,he quickly found out, he had forgotten. _Damn it!_

Seeing Jacen's distressed look, the girl to his left picked an apple up off the table and offered it to Jacen. "Here, have my apple."

Jacen accepted the apple graciously, only now realizing how hungry he was. "Thank you very much," he said, starting to bring the apple to his mouth but then stopped and turned towards the girl who had given it to him. "Umm excuse me, but I don't believe I caught your name."

The girl turned towards Jacen. "That would be because I never gave it to you," she said matter-of-factly, "But since you asked, its Gina, Gina Conridge." Jacen immediately felt a little intimidated by Gina. She was tall, not as tall as Kelsey but close, and had olive skin. Her hair was a vibrant black that seemed to have a silvery glint to it and her eyes where a piercing dark green. But by far what stuck out to Jacen the most was this air of superiority she seemed to bestow in the way she moved and how she spoke. All that aside, He didn't think she was that unfriendly, just intimidating.

"Ahh, well it's nice to meet you Gina," Jacen responded before taking a quick bite out of the apple. Then he heard muffled giggles coming from behind Gina and looked over. _What the hell…_

There to Gina's left where the two other girls who had smiled warmly at him, only they both looked exactly the same as the other. They where younger than the others at the table, _probably freshmen_, Jacen though. They had dirty-blond hair, both woven back into braids which complimented their Nordic looks and deep blue eyes. They wore matching pink tank tops over a white shirt. In fact the only distinguishable feature about them was that the one had a moon emblazoned on their tank top while the other had a sun.

Noticing that they had called attention to themselves, the two cast fleeting glances at each other and then locked on Jacen, looking like they were up to something. "Oh, don't mind Gina, she-" the closer one said flatly before stopping abruptly, as if waiting for something. "-Is like that with everyone," the other finished in the exact same tone, only moments after the first had stopped.

Jacen just sat there staring at them and then heard Kelsey lean over and whisper into his ear. "The one with the moon is Kat and the other is Erika, they are the Carlson twins. They like to make people think they have some sort of psychic twin thing going. They are good at it too," she added, with a hint of amusement in her voice.

Responding to Kelsey spoiling their fun, Kat and Erika playfully stuck their tongues out at her in unison. "Aww Kelsey, why-" Erica said, leaving her sentence open for Kat to finish. "-Did you tell him. He was taking the bait!" she ended emphatically.

Kelsey began to respond but Jacen wasn't listening. His focus had shifted to the two who hadn't said a word since he had sat down. The shy one had barley taken a bite out of her lunch and seemed to still be staring at the same spot on the table. Jacen felt bad for her, she seemed scared in a way, but sensing that he might be part of the problem, he decided against trying to talk to her. The other, Jacen didn't know what to think of; she seemed agitated but would adopt a soft, worried look when she looked at the shy one, which she did periodically throughout the lunch period.

"Ahem!" Gina said loudly in an authoritative tone that caused Kelsey and the twins to stop talking and turn around. "I meant to ask you Kelsey, is Jacen the boy you where telling us about yesterday?" Kelsey flushed a little, causing Gina to dawn an evil smirk. "You know the one who you ran into skulking around the girl's dorm?"

All eyes turned towards Kelsey, who looked at Jacen questioningly. He sighed in defeat and then nodded to Kelsey. She sat upright and looked directly at Gina. "First off, he was not skulking... he was totally and utterly lost."


	2. So it Begins

**Chapter 2: So it Begins**  
(April 4th --- Outbreak)

It had been three months since Jacen had come to Bestine Academy and he was adapting well. He had caught up on all the content that his old school hadn't covered and was able to keep up with the faster pace, if only barely.

Much to Jacen's liking as well, he found himself a happy member of not one but two circles of friends. On one side he had Dave and the gang who met up frequently for video games and trips into town, as well as a few pranks; like three weeks ago when, during a lapse in judgment, Jacen had agreed with the others that it would be great to run through the school in his shark suit yelling "I am the White Knight" over and over at the top of his lungs. _And it was_, he reminisced, _up until I got stuck in that Saturday detention. _

On the other he had the girls at the lunch table who had accepted him into their tight knit group, even the shy girl and the angry girl had warmed up to him… to an extent. Shy girl was still overly shy in his presence; she would talk to him now, but would apologize for just about every little thing that she thought she did wrong... Which happened often because she was his assigned lab partner in Chemistry class.

Jacen mentioned the two a few days after his initial meeting with the table and Kelsey explained to him that the girl he called the shy one, a small girl with tan skin and curly dark brown hair was called Olivia Larsson; apparently she gets anxious around boys, so much so that she actually feared encountering them. In regards to the angry girl, Kelsey informed him that the muscular sophomore with Auburn hair was known as Melissa Finney and that she was best friends with Olivia, as well as her unofficial protector.

Kelsey had wanted to kill two birds with one stone by having Jacen get used to being around girls, and having Olivia get used to being around Jacen. Weeks later she confessed as much to Melissa, even managing to get away unscathed, if only because her plan was working.

As he got out of bed and began the process of getting ready for school that Tuesday morning on the fourth of April, Jacen thought about all of this. He stood up and blinked his eyes rapidly, trying to clear his vision. When he did, he found Dave watching the news, as had become the custom each morning ever since they had fished the thing out of a giant mound of trash in the nearby junkyard.

Jacen let out a large sigh as he observed his friend fully engrossed by the glow of the screen. Three days ago, on April first, they had woken up to the newscaster talking of violent riots breaking out in New York City's downtown area. Many had assumed it was a prank until the second day, when the riots where said to have spread city wide, along with a few homicide cases supposedly unrelated to the riot where the victims had bite marks and flesh ripped off in some areas; on the third day the mayor declared a state of emergency, calling in the National Guard and even the army reserve. "So what's the news today?" Jacen asked solemnly.

Dave slowly shook his head and looked at him, and eventually replied in a somber tone, "Not good. New York isn't reporting anything… at all. This reporter is different than the other one; it's like they're pretending the other guy never even existed, and this new one is broadcasting from their HQ in Atlanta." He paused and let out a concerned sigh, "That's not the worst of it; riots with similar characteristics are beginning to be reported in Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, and Huston."

Jacen looked at his friend with concern. _Why is Dave so obsessed over this?_ he thought to himself. "Look," Jacen said in a falsely upbeat voice, "Im sure that everything will work out… now we need to get ready to go to school."

"Im not going in today," Dave said flatly and looked back at the television.

"Ok," he replied, and began getting ready for school. Jacen knew it was best to leave Dave be when he was in a bad mood like this.

* * *

Ten minutes later, after telling Dave he hopes he feels better, Jacen left the dorm to go to school. As he made his way down the stairs he ran into George. George stopped and waited for Jacen to catch up, and as he approached, George gave him a confused look. "Where's Dave?" He asked as they continued down the stairs together.

Jacen frowned. "He isn't going in today."

"Why?" George asked, sounding concerned.

"You know the riot everyone's been talking about, the one in New York…" He paused and waited for George to nod, "…ever since Dave first heard about it, he's been acting really weird. I don't know why though."

George stopped cold and looked Jacen in the eyes. "You don't know?" he asked and then when Jacen just stood there clueless he sighed, "No… I guess you didn't… Listen up Jacen, Dave's dad is a Police officer in New York."

* * *

_We're kinda close to New York_, Jacen though as he waited for his chemistry teacher to arrive for class, _I mean we aren't that close, not nearly as close as we are to Pittsburgh, but we would be screwed if the riot got this far, the school has 4 guards and they've probably only ever dealt with the occasional boy trying to sneak into the girls dorm for the night._

Jacen looked over at the currently empty seat that Dave would usually occupy. _Poor guy, I hope his parents are ok. I can't imagine going through that with my parents, probably won't have to, worse come to worse they could always blow the bridge and isolate themselves. _

Just as he was finishing his thought Mr. Henderson, Jacen's chemistry teacher, walked in and immediately began to address the class in a booming voice. "OK everyone, we will be starting the lab immediately, you will need the whole class period if you hope to get it done before class is over." He said, and began to take a seat at his desk, but then stopped and looked up at the class. "Oh yes, almost forgot…same groups as always, that is all."

Jacen stood up and tried as best as he could to forget about Dave's situation as he walked over to meet Olivia at the lab table. "Good morning Olivia, How are you today?" He asked politely as he put on his goggles and lab apron.

She blushed slightly and looked down at the lab bench. "Ve-verry good thank you," Olivia said quietly, stuttering slightly at the beginning after which she began to put her safety gear on.

_Which is a good idea_, Jacen thought as he began to get the materials out, _since we're making smoke bombs today_.

Five minutes later they had everything set up. "Ok, we're ready to go. Do you want add the ingredients to the skillet or should I?" Jacen asked knowing from experience that she wouldn't.

"You," she said hurriedly, gazing timidly at the floor to avoid making eye contact.

Jacen smiled and nodded, "Sure, but you have to test the finished product then." She let out a squeak of alarm but then silently indicated to him that she found that acceptable. As he performed the required step he mumbled, "3 parts potassium nitrate…2 parts sugar…low heat…"

Olivia read the next part of the instructions to him, quietly as usual, "O…k…umm, you need to stir the mixture until it melts and becomes a caramel-chocolate color."

After a minute of stirring the mixture did as Olivia said it would; seeing the substance changing into the desired color, Jacen looked over to his nervous partner. "Could you get two pieces of tinfoil out for me?" he asked as he turned the burner off. She nodded and immediately slid the pieces of foil. _Wow! She must have gotten it ready before hand_, he thought approvingly, _she is very organized._

Using his spoon Jacen poured a tiny droplet of the mixture onto the first for a test run and then the rest of it onto the other square directly next to the first. Looking back over at Olivia he saw that she was ready, standing tensely with a matchbox in one hand. "You ok to do this?" Jacen asked, "I can do it if you really want me to."

Olivia shook her head, causing her curly brown hair to swish back and forth. "No. I said I would do it, so I will," she said, more confidently than Jacen was used to. _Good for you._

Slowly she broke a match off from the inside of the box and raised her hand to strike it. When she did, the flame glowed vibrantly. Cautiously Olivia brought the lit match over the now solid mixture. "Jacen!" a voice yelled urgently from the front of the room, startling Olivia and causing her to accidentally drop the match into the large batch of the mixture. The moment the match made contact with the mixture it ignited and instantly erupted in a cloud of smoke right in Olivia's face. She started coughing violently and began to fall over.

"Jacen!" the voice bellowed again in the background to no avail.

Forgetting the voice, Jacen leaped behind her, placing himself between her and the Lab-bench embedded into the ground behind them. She hit him hard, slamming his back into the bench and causing him to "oof" sound as air was forced out of his lungs. Ignoring the pain, he sat up and looked over to Olivia to see if she was hurt. She was staring at him, sitting on her knees with her hands over her mouth, her dark brown eyes silently pleading for forgiveness. The moment they made eye contact she burst into tears. "Ohmygod, you're hurt," she cried, and then continued hurriedly with little articulation, "Im so sorry, it's all my fault, Im sorry, im a horrible friend…"

Seeing Olivia cry was more than he could bear. _I have to do something to comfort her_, Jacen thought as she continued to apologize and put her self down; almost instinctively he leaned over and hugged her. Olivia stiffened, surprised by the contact, but then relaxed as the initial shock wore off. "It's ok," Jacen whispered soothingly into her ear, "It's not your fault, I don't blame you." Slowly he withdrew from the hug and sat back. Blushing furiously, Olivia locked her gaze back on the floor, feeling too uncomfortable to make eye contact again.

"Jacen!" the voice yelled. Jacen slowly stood up and looked at the door. There, with a look of sheer panic on his face, stood Dave. "Something is happening outside. There are these… these Things walking around!" he wheezed; nearly out of breath.

_He doesn't scare easily_, Jacen thought, _I better see what he's talking about._ "Show me," he said coldly and then began to follow Dave out the door, but then stopping. "Wait!"

He called after Dave to wait up for a moment and ran back into the classroom and kneeled next to Olivia. "I need you to do something for me," he said urgently, "I don't know if this is real or not; but just in case I need you to make sure no one leaves the room until I get back. Can you do that for me?"

"Yeah!" she answered, her features hardening with conviction.

"Thank you," Jacen said kindly before running out the door.

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­As Jacen dashed away from the classroom he distantly heard Olivia call after him. "Be careful!"


	3. Taking the Leap

**A/N: **I had a lot of trouble with the combat scenes, if you have any advice on how to improve it; I would be very appreciative. Enjoy!

* * *

**Chapter 3: Taking the Leap**

(April 4th --- Day of Sorrows)

Dave turned left around a corner, momentarily leaving Jacen's line of sight. Increasing his speed, Jacen followed around the corner.

"Oooof!" Jacen groaned as he ran straight into…something and fell over. As Jacen pulled himself up he looked upon the large object he had run into, which turned out to be Dave. He was standing perfectly still; oblivious to the fact that Jacen had just run into him.

"What the Hell did you stop for?" Jacen asked angrily as he kneaded the back of his neck. "I thought you where going to show me something outs-" He stopped cold as he noticed the figure standing beyond Dave. It was the most horrifying thing Jacen had ever set eyes on. There in front of Dave stood Walter, a shopkeeper who owned a general store in town… except it wasn't. Yes it looked like him; maybe it even had been Walter at one point, but not anymore. Its eyes where totally wrong, his once vibrant blue eyes where now dulled, seemingly covered by a white mist. Gone was the spark of life Jacen had come to know him for, now replaced by a void, holding no sign of the soul that had once occupied it. But that wasn't what bothered Jacen the most. What really bothered him was that his throat was missing, seemingly ripped out.

Frozen by fear, Jacen just stood there as the creature unhinged its jaw and silently began to limp towards them. Then, as if a light had clicked on, Jacen's survival instincts kicked in. He grabbed Dave by the wrist and jerked him away from the advancing creature. Dragged back into reality, Dave began to move on his own, allowing them to run around the corner with sufficient time to spare. Not content to stop there they continued to dash into the boy's bathroom and brace themselves against the door. "What the Fuck was that?" Jacen asked, on the verge of panic.

Dave shook his head frantically. "I don't know! I had been looking out the window and saw Mr. Knight running towards the school. I figured he was late but then I saw Mrs. Hancock slowly following him. He got to the doors but they where locked, He frantically started trying to find a key but then heard Mrs. Hancock approaching. He turned and ran towards her holding his briefcase in the air and then he swung it at her, hitting her in the side. She should have had the wind knocked out of her but she looked unfazed, she grabbed him and… and…Jacen, she bit him… right on that fleshy part by his left collarbone… she….she tore a chunk off, Jacen!" As he spoke Dave's voice became more and more frantic. _I have to get him to focus on something else or he's going to loose it_, Jacen thought to himself.

Jacen grimaced, not liking the course of action he had decided on, and looked Dave in the eyes. "Dave, where do the teachers keep confiscated stuff?" He asked sternly.

"Why do y-"

"I need to get to my shark suit!" Jacen exclaimed, "Now tell me where it would be"

Gaining control over himself, Dave managed a brief, wry grin. "All that stuff is in a locker in the teachers lounge next to the library."

Jacen drew the route in his minds eye, _that's not that far from here. We can do this!_ "You know we will have to take Walter to get there though, right?"

Dave gulped and nodded solemnly. "We should probably take a look out there first, before we go rushing out."

Jacen slid the door open, careful not to make any noise. "Shit!" he cursed moments later as he ducked back into the safety of the bathroom.

"What?"

"Its heading towards the teachers lounge," he said with a scowl

Dave cracked his knuckles. "Look, leave Walter to me," he said adamantly, "Once I have its attention I want you to make a run for the teachers lounge, got it?"

"But what about y…" Jacen stopped, seeing the conviction in his eyes.

"No offense Jacen but as you are now you would be near useless in a fight. You said it yourself, you need it," Dave said emphatically as he began to open the door. "Wait fifteen seconds and then run for it," and with that he was gone.

Jacen stood there counting to himself. When he finally reached fifteen he burst out of the door and dashed as fast as he could. He was surprised to find no sign of Dave or the creature, but pushed all speculation to the back of his mind and focused on the task at hand.

It took him all of ten seconds to make it to the room and, once there found the locker quite easily. _It would be locked with my luck, wouldn't it?_ Jacen thought sourly as he tried to open it. He frantically looked around the room trying to find anything that he could use to pry the locker open; unfortunately he was in a school so such objects where hard to come by.

Eventually he noticed an old paper cutter in the corner. He picked it up by the blade handle and started kicking at the plastic base it was attached to, succeeding to break it off with two swift kicks. Experimentally slicing it through the air, he was pleased to find that it had a satisfying weight to it. Holding the blade in his right hand he walked over to the locker and raised the makeshift sword over his head and then brought it down with all his might in a downward slash. The blade easily pierced the thin aluminum that the locker was made of, creating a three foot long gash in the door. He stuck the blade into the gash and used it to pry the hole wider, after repeating this process a couple of times he was able to reach it and pull out the suit.

Jacen began to dawn the gear as soon as it cleared the hole, hoping that he could get to Dave in time.

* * *

Around the corner from the teachers lounge, Dave was struggling for his life. Things had been going pretty well at the beginning. He had dashed down the hall barreling straight towards the creature and had ducked a shoulder forward and ended up checking the creature in the back. Unfortunately Dave had put too much momentum into the attack and lost balance, causing him to fall right next to the monster and hit his head on the floor. Disoriented by the fall he had taken, Dave had tried to get up, but couldn't, finding that he was having trouble thinking straight. The same did not apply to his opponent, it rolled over and began to claw its way towards him. Dave then tried to pull himself away from the creature in a frantic scramble that ended up only delaying the final struggle.

IT caught up to him, and Dave, still too dazed to co-ordinate well, could only manage to keep the thing at arms length as it tried to bite at him like a rabid dog. He couldn't hold it back forever either, while this thing seemed to not be tiring at all, Dave on the other hand was getting weaker by the second. _Well I tried my best. All I can do is hope that I bought him enough time_, He thought, at peace with his fate.

Just then, he saw a figure appear behind the creature and begin to reach out its dainty yet muscular hands. _Is that an angle?_ Dave asked himself, on the verge of exhaustion. The hands got closer and closer, one arm on each side of the creatures, and then in a lightning fast movement the figure wrapped her arms around the monster and jerked its head around to the left farther than a neck should turn. The creature went limp, or at least most of it, the head was still biting, but that was all it could do.

The last thing Dave saw before he blacked out was the image of the unknown figure rolling IT off of him and kneeling by his side.

* * *

By his count it had taken Jacen seven minutes and twenty three seconds to fully equip his shark suit. Equipped from head to ankle, with only his face and feet not covered by the titanium links, Jacen felt like a tank about to go out and fight some Indians. He took an experimental first step and found that, although it was rather heavy compared to his experience with it in the water that it was tolerable and if his intuition on the situation was true, Jacen had the sinking feeling that he would have more than enough time to get used to it.

Jacen picked up his makeshift sword and charged out of the room weapon raised, only to find no one in sight. Suddenly he heard a thick snapping noise, and followed it to its source around the corner and found a girl with auburn hair kneeling next to Dave, who was laying on his back and five feet away, was the mostly still body of Walter. _Wait… that hair… is that Melissa?_

The clanking noise of his armor alerted the girl of his approach. She jumped up into a fighting position of some sort, but relaxed as soon as she recognized Jacen's face. Initially she looked relieved, but then glared at him accusingly. "Where were you while he was getting attacked?" Melissa asked harshly as she pointed at Dave, who seemed to Jacen to be relatively unharmed.

"I was doing what Dave told me to do," he replied defensively, "What are you doing here anyway?"

"Olivia called me, she asked me to make sure you where safe, don't know what you did, but she seems to have warmed up towards you," Melissa responded matter-of-factly, then seeing Jacen's confused look added, "She sent me because I have a brown belt in Krav Maga…"

Jacen rested the makeshift sword over his shoulder. "Did you see anymore of those things on your way here?"

Her features darkened considerably. "Yes, there are at least twenty that I saw," she said darkly then in a quieter, worried voice finished, "Jacen, they are all over. Why haven't they announced anything over the loudspeakers? Someone must have seen them by now!"

Finally beginning to fully understand the severity of the situation, Jacen swiftly pointed his sword at the girl's bathroom next to them. "Go in there with Dave and barricade the door. Don't open it for anyone unless they knock three times first," he said in an authoritative voice, "Im gonna head to the main office and see what's happening." As soon as he had finished speaking Jacen ran off at a slow, yet steady pace to avoid wasting time arguing.

When he finally reached the office, Jacen did not like what he saw. The room looked like a war zone, everything was knocked over and there was blood everywhere. The only thing that was missing where the corpses, which where standing over the pools of blood. There where three of them, all horribly disfigured and all with the same soul-less eyes as poor Walter.

Jacen's suit made a metallic clanking noise as he took a step forward, blade raised. Hearing the noise, one of them looked over at him and opened its jaw letting out a low primal moan that had the effect of alerting the others. All three of them began to advance towards him, moaning eerily. On a whim he flipped the weapon around so the heavy, blunt end was facing outwards, deciding that it suited the occasion better. Jacen approached the creatures slowly and cautiously, weapon held at the ready.

Setting his sights on the creature closest to him, Jacen rushed forward swinging the weapon like a baseball bat. It connected with the first one's neck, dropping it instantly. An unpleasant crunching feeling of the creature's spinal cord snapping shivered up the weapon and into Jacen's hand. The feeling shocked him, causing him to momentarily drop his guard. The second creature to Jacen's left latched onto him and tried to biting into the side of base of his neck, but due to the protection of the shark suit, all it succeeded in doing was cause Jacen to yell in pain and rage.

Jacen hooked his right foot around creature number two's legs and pulled, causing it to loose its grip and topple over. Without hesitation he lifted the makeshift weapon up in his right hand and brought it down through an ark which hit the creature right in the temple as it attempted to get up. It instantly went limp and fell back to the ground.

­

The third creature was already upon him as he looked up, breathing heavily from all the physical exertion. Taking advantage of the protection his gloves provided Jacen took hold of the blade end of the sword with his left hand and jamming the butt of the weapon into the creatures face. He then followed up by quickly bringing the weapon up with both hands and then slashing downwards, embedding into the creatures forehead.

Wearily Jacen removed the weapon and walked over to the first creature whose head was still alive and performed a finishing blow. He stumbled into the principal's office where the P.A. system is kept. Jacen found the microphone unplugged, lying on the floor. Inserting the plug into the power socket Jacen took the microphone over to the desk in the middle of the room and sank into the chair, _I need to exercise more_, he thought. Flipping the switch on the microphone to broadcast over the loudspeakers throughout the school, Jacen began to speak, not bothering to hide the sheer exhaustion in his voice.

* * *

Olivia sat hiding silently with her cell phone out, waiting anxiously for Melissa to respond to her message of warning. Ten minutes after Jacen had left with his roommate to combat some unknown force outside, a creature had passed by. She didn't see it herself but after hearing matching descriptions of the, _what did they call it… oh yes a Zombie_, descriptions of the Zombie, Olivia decided that she hoped she never saw one. 

She looked down, feeling her phone vibrate in her hands. Olivia's arms shook as she flipped it open and read the message. (Thanks for the warning, but I already killed one saving Jacen's friend. Im hiding in the bathroom and should be safe for the moment.)

Olivia began to reply when the phone vibrated again, indicating another message.(Batteries low, turning phone off to conserve power) ,_Wait! _She thought mentally yelling at the phone, _what about Jacen?_ But knowing that her friends phone was off, decided to do the same, noting how much power her phone had.

Time went by in silence for a while, save for the occasional moan of zombies sound as they passed by the door, and a few girls whispering excitedly to each other. _Idiots!_ She thought angrily, _they have no idea this serious this is. We could all die, and they act like we're in a haunted house. _The semi-silence ended abruptly when the loudspeaker above the door came to life with an ear splitting screech

"Teachers and Students of Bestine Academy," a familiar, yet weary voice said, "demons of unimaginable horror have overrun Bestine and are now beginning to appear around and throughout the school in ever increasing numbers. These same creatures are apparently responsible for the so called riots erupting in major cities throughout the country, maybe even the world. If we are to survive the coming times, we will need to rally together and face this threat as a united force!" The voice paused, letting the words sink in.

"We need to secure the main building," the voice continued, "but I can not do it alone. So, in hopes of obtaining that goal I am asking all those willing to fight for our survival to meet me in the cafeteria. Bring anything you can find that can be used as a weapon, and travel in groups. Should you be forced to fight one of these creatures, I advise you to aim for the head or neck. Nothing else seems to work."

The voice paused yet again, as if trying to make a decision. "As for all those unwilling or unable to fight; Stay where you are and lock the doors. When the building is secured I will alert you, and give you directions. Until then it is important for all of you to remain calm. Panic will only cause disorder and destruction of property, property which will not be able to replace… That is all…Jacen Bennett, over and out!" the voice said as the speaker fell silent, seemingly finished.

"Jacen, Thank God you're alive!" Olivia said out loud before blushing furiously, noticing the whole class was staring at her.

Just then, much to Olivia's relief, the speakers screeched into life again. "I almost forgot," the voice started, with a hint of embarrassment, "if anyone passes by the girls bathroom next to the library, please knock three times and escort my friend and his savior to the nearest occupied classroom before continuing."


	4. A Leader Emerges

**A/N: **Thank you for the reviews ive been waiting to get some criticism before making this one. Figuring that I should wait just in case I needed to change my writing style drastically.

Anyways I rather enjoyed making this chapter because Ben came to existence in it. It was a random occurrence; I hadn't planned to have him in there but I immediately found myself attached to him and I hope you like him too.

* * *

**Chapter 4: A Leader Emerges **  
(April 4th --- 0 Days until Outbreak)

Jacen stood on a table overlooking the crowd. He estimated that one fourth of the school's population were crowded into the cafeteria, holding everything from paper cutters like his own, to baseball bats. They where composed of people of all types, boys and girls, geeks and jocks, young and old; every group in the school had at least a few people present, including a number of teachers. _Maybe we can really do this_.

_Twelve noon_, he noted mentally as he glanced up at the clock, _it's been an hour; if they aren't here yet than they probably aren't coming. _Jacen looked down at a small freshman with green eyes and blond surfer hair who he had given a set of keys and nodded. The boy disappeared into the crowd, rushing off to lock the doors as Jacen had told him to be ready to do. The boy, named Ben, had been the first one to arrive, clinging to a plunger. Upon his arrival he had become immediately enthralled by the sight of Jacen in his blood stained shark suit and hefting a paper cutter. The kid had stuck to Jacen like glue ever since.

The suit had that effect on a lot of people; it was like people saw him in it and just assumed he was running things. _Do they even know the guy in the suit is the same person who had called them here_? thought Jacen dryly.

Seeing a plunger rise into the air in the back of the room, Jacen began. "Everyone!" he boomed, trying to carry his voice across the whole cafeteria, "I have had the doors locked so that we are not attacked while we organize, so do not be alarmed… in fact you should probably relax, the task we are about to embark on will require all of you at your very best, which will not be possible if you remain on your toes constantly."

Some did as he said, but most didn't. "The plan is as follows; we have divided the school into grids. You will all be divided into groups of five and most groups will be assigned a grid in an area of one of the three inter-connected buildings that make up the school. Your group will go to your grid and search it systematically, killing any creatures you find along the way. Remember that this is our new home until we can take back the whole campus, so anything you overlook may end up killing us all," Jacen paused and inhaled deeply, "Once you have secured your grid you are to send a runner back here to update us on our overall progress while the other four guard the area in case one walks in from another grid."

Jacen stopped and waited a moment for the information to sink in before continuing, "A few groups will be assigned the task of going from door to door barricading it so that no more creatures enter, while still others will serve as fillers; going wherever they are needed. Now, each group must have at least one senior and at least one freshman, in addition I want no all girl or all boy groups… OK, once you group up, have a representative come up to me and get your assignment."

He took a seat and watched as the room erupted into noise and frantic movement. Ben appeared to Jacen's left and saluted, plunger resting against his shoulder, "Sir! I have finished the task given to me…" The young boy paused hesitantly before continuing, "umm… Sir?"

"What's up Ben?" Jacen asked, amused at being called 'sir'.

Ben shifted his weight and gulped nervously, while still holding the salute, "Sir, I would like to join your squad!"

_The kid has spunk_, he thought approvingly, then grinned for the first time since the attack, "Permission granted, welcome aboard." Ben beamed, almost glowing with pride. "Oh and you can stop saluting me now," Jacen added, starting to feel attached to the kid.

Ben took a seat next to him, "So Sir, what is going to be our assignment?"

"Half of the second floor in C-building; we have the side with the library."

* * *

Thirty minutes later the nineteenth representative went running off to inform her group. _That will make mine group twenty_, he noted, _once I assemble it_. Jacen stood up and addressed the crowd, "Anyone who is not currently in a group please come forward," he yelled.

Five people made their way through the crowd, they consisting of a senior boy, three freshmen; one boy and two girls, and a teacher. The teacher was a man named Mr. Spada, who taught metal shop. He was a big guy with graying hair and was carrying a crude dagger. _Where the hell did he get that?_ Jacen asked himself as he approached the group.

Jacen pointed at the three freshmen first. "You three; you're with me and Ben over there," he said before walking over to Mr. Spada, "Could you stay behind and coordinate the search?" The man grimaced, but nodded. Then turning towards the senior, Jacen added firmly, "You will serve as Mr. Spada's guard."

"Sure," the senior said, unsure whether he was disappointed or relieved.

Jacen began to turn away when a hand clamped on his shoulder and spun him around. "Here," The teacher said as he handed Jacen the dagger, "You need this more than I do."

Accepting the dagger graciously, Jacen turned and walked up to the Ben who sat cradling his plunger in his arms. Jacen dropped the paper cutter on the table, using his free hand to pull the plunger out of Ben's grip, "Use my paper cutter; it served me well, may it now do the same for you."

Ben leaned over and picked up the weapon reverently. "Thank you, it is an honor," Ben said in a much too serious tone.

Jacen patted the kid on the head, ruffling his hair, "No problem. Now could you please go around and unlock the doors; it is time." Ben ran off into the crowd cradling his new weapon in both arms. _That boy isn't going to be that innocent after today_, he thought sadly, _and the world will be a worse place for it._

Five minutes later Ben returned and gave him the thumbs up. Jacen climbed up on the table; his armor clanking heavily in the process. Alerted by the sound of his armor, the crows quieted, waiting expectantly for Jacen to speak. "Today we face Demons too horrible to occupy the deepest bowls of Hell. These monsters are evil, ruthless, and determined to the point of single mindedness. They will continue to peruse you until you kill them or they kill you…" he began solemnly, "But take heart, they can be killed. Although they can continue to function after taking extensive damage to the body, they cannot survive a broken neck or a crushing blow to the head. So when you are out there combating the beings who threaten our survival, remember… AIM FOR THE HEAD!"

"AIM FOR THE HEAD!" the crowd echoed as they thrust their weapons into the air in a frenzy of rage and inspiration.

"Now get out there and kill some Zombies!"


	5. Berserker

**Chapter 5: Berserker**  
(April 4th ---0 Days until Outbreak)

Jacen led squad twenty across the walkway on their way to their grid in C-building. Accompanying them was squad eleven who where responsible for a grid right next to theirs. Once they reached group elevens gird they stopped and began to search the nearest class room. Jacen's squad continued on reaching their area soon after.

As they approached the library freshmen gasped, seeing the almost dead body of Walter. _Oh yeah_, Jacen thought sheepishly, _forgot about that one_. All but one of the freshmen stayed back as Jacen approached the body, with Ben trailing after protectively.

The body was mostly still except for its head which kept darting its milky eyes all around and biting at air. Jacen knelt next to it and held its head still with his armored left hand as he jabbed the dagger into its temple. The eyes stopped moving and its jaw hung open, the creature was dead.

Jacen looked back at his group, assessing their reaction. The color had drained out of all of their faces and they all looked as if they where about throw up, but none did, much to Jacen's satisfaction. Then a thought occurred to him, _it's unlikely but I better check._

Making his way to the girl's bathroom, Jacen stopped and knocked on the door three times. "Jacen?" A voice asked wearily from the other side of the door. _Crap… no one got them._

"Yeah it's me, come on out," Jacen said soothingly. On the other side of the door Jacen heard a ruffling sound as Melissa cleared the debris away from the door.

Minutes later the door opened, revealing a distressed Melissa. "What took so long? I was worried sick," she said.

Jacen gave a brief summary of everything that had happening then lead into what was happening currently. "So now we are going to the Library."

Melissa gawked at Jacen for a moment before gaining control of herself again. "Wait, so you're telling me that you're running the show now? Jacen Bennett, the guy who only three months ago would have pissed himself if a girl came within five feet of him…That Jacen?" she finished emphatically.

Ben ran up to Melissa and stared her straight in the eye. "You can't talk to him like that; He took out three monsters single handedly and then went on to warn the whole school while he was still catching his breath, who knows how many more would have died if he hadn't!" he finished angrily, visibly upset that his hero had been insulted.

Jacen put his hand on Ben's shoulder. "She's right you know. When I got here three months ago I was afraid of girls," he said diplomatically, then as Ben walked away and re-joined the rest of the group added, "How is Dave doing?"

She shrugged, "He's is doing well enough. Conscious at least, but for the next couple days we shouldn't let him fall asleep for too long; it was a pretty bad blow."

Walking past Melissa Jacen entered the bathroom and found his friend lying on the floor with his head elevated by a roll of toilet paper. "Can you walk?"

"Kinda… with help," Dave added grudgingly.

Jacen looked over at Melissa, _I'd like to have her with me, but none of the freshmen can carry his weight, and im needed here._ "Melissa, take Dave to room 117 down the hall; Olivia is in there and probably has the place locked down. Then head down to the cafeteria and go wherever help is needed," he said in an authoritative tone. Melissa nodded and went back into the bathroom to get Dave.

Walking back over to his group, Jacen sighed and then began to speak; "Let's go, and remember if you spot one, call for help and wait; don't engage it alone."

Clanking loudly, Jacen entered the library, followed by Ben and the others. The library would have been an intimidating place in the dark, but it was only two in the afternoon, so the room was brightly lit. He couldn't see any creatures, and would under other circumstances assume that the room was unoccupied, but due to what was at stake, decided to have everyone fan out and look.

No more than three minutes later, everyone had emerged back in the center of the room, all confirming Jacen's initial assessment. "Good Job everyone, now let's seal the doors and continue on to the next roo-"

Jacen was interrupted by screams of pure agony down the hall. _That's group elevens area_. "Stay here!" Jacen yelled over his shoulder, already making his way out the door.

Running as fast as he could with his armor on, Jacen ran down the hall towards the wails of suffering, and then redoubled his efforts when they abruptly stopped. Reaching the area where Jacen thought the screams had been coming from, he stopped; looking for any sign of where to go next.

He found that sign when a new voice screamed for help, from inside the math office. Switching the Dagger to a reverse grip, Jacen rushed into the room.

There where five Zombies and ten bodies, four where members of group eleven, two resembled teachers, and the remaining four looked like they didn't belong. The fifth member of group five was backing into a corner, swinging a wrench back and forth frantically as the creatures closed in.

Rearing his head back, Jacen roared in rage and pure hatred for the creatures…_No, Demons_ standing in front of him. So far this crisis hadn't been personal for Jacen, but now these things had killed people he knew, people who had been doing what he had ordered them to do! Beside himself with anger, Jacen charged, still bellowing that primal incoherent roar.

The noise caused the demons to shift their attention to Jacen; for the remaining member of group eleven to escape past them and run out the door. Jacen hit the first one at full force, thrusting the blade upward through the soft area under the chin.

Before the first hit the ground Jacen was already upon the second; stabbing at its forehead. As he attacked a fog began to slowly form over his vision, starting in the corners of his eyes and working inwards. By this point Jacen had abandoned all logic, succumbing to the rage building within him; no longer caring to aim for the soft targets he had exploited thus far.

The fog fully enveloped him as the second demon fell, forcing Jacen's consciousness into dormancy as something else took over.

* * *

Melissa had only been in the cafeteria five minutes when an average size boy ran frantically through the doors, heading straight for Mr. Spada of all people. She intercepted him halfway through the room and grabbed onto him firmly. He was sobbing, loudly and looked like he'd been through hell. "What happened?" Melissa asked firmly. 

The boy wrapped his arms around her, acting like a scared child seeking protection from their mother, _not that I could blame him_, Melissa added mentally. "W-we went into the math office and found three creatures standing over the bodies of two teachers. As we entered they turned towards us and let out th-this moan… Oh God it was horrible... We thought we could take them; we outnumbered them five to three, but then as we started to fight them, others came in…" he stopped and waited silently for a moment before continuing, "It was that moan, that horrible moan; it called to others nearby," the boy ended, exhaustion creeping into his voice.

"How did you get out?" She asked him soothingly. Melissa hated making him relive this but she needed to know how much backup to send.

"We-we took out four of them before they overwhelmed us," he continued, ignoring the question completely, "Ted was the first to fall, then Linda, then Adam, James was the last… then…. then I was the only one left. They backed me into a corner, and-and I knew I was going to die… but then a man in armor appeared and charged all five of them. I-I saw a chance to escape… I took it… OH God! Why did I survive, I should have died with the rest of them…" He sank to his knees and began to cry uncontrollably.

_A man in armor… it must be Jacen._ "Somebody get over here and help the kid!" Melissa yelled and then, after making sure someone was taking care of him, ran towards the math office.

Melissa reached the office at a dead run, but was stopped cold when she saw the utter carnage in the room. Disfigured bodies lay everywhere and then suddenly with a 'thud' another body joined the others on the floor. Her stomach lurched in repulsion, threatening that it would send out its content. Melissa swallowed, pushing her breakfast back down.

Looking up from the horrible carnage on the floor, Melissa saw Jacen. He stood alone now, encircled by the bodies of his foes, chest heaving up and down; trying to provide him with enough oxygen. _He looks like a wild animal_, she thought in horror.

Jacen merely stood there, with his back turned to her, not moving an inch. Figuring he was in some sort of trance, Melissa took a step forward. The noise triggered something in Jacen and he spun around, standing ready to lunge at her with his dagger.

His eyes where different now, not like the monsters which had a void where its soul should be, but looking like he was on autopilot. Deciding that Jacen wasn't himself and might very well attack her, Melissa settled into a defensive stance and waited for him to make the next move.

* * *

Peering through the dense fog that covered his consciousness Jacen could make out a familiar figure; he couldn't tell who it was but he knew it was familiar. He could also feel himself tense as he prepared to lunge. Slowly the fog was receding, allowing Jacen to begin to see who was in front of him. _Melissa_, the word echoed through his mind. He had to work to process what that meant. _No! Im about to attack Melissa!_ Jacen thought with increasing clarity. 

Through sheer force of will in combination with a fear of hurting his friend, Jacen pushed the fog back, deep into the recessed of his mind from whence it came.

* * *

_He's been standing there for a minute now_, Melissa thought. But as soon as she finished forming the words in her head, Jacen tensed, signaling he would attack any moment. 

Jacen never did. As soon as he started to move he had stopped, a glint of the normal Jacen appearing in his eyes. His body began to relax and Jacen dropped the dagger on the floor. Looking infinitely tired Jacen began to sway back and forth, seeming like he may fall over at any moment.

Sensing that he no longer posed any threat to her, Melissa ran forward to catch him as he started to fall forward; almost falling over herself when she caught him. Melissa knew she was strong but the extra weight of Jacen's armor was pushing it.

Melissa began to drag the now unconscious Jacen out the door when she heard approaching footsteps coming from the library. Looking up she found the annoying little brat who had confronted her earlier, _Ben wasn't it?_ she asked herself as the boy looked at Jacen with concern. "Is he dead?"

"No he'll be fine, albeit unconscious, but fine. Taking on five zombies by yourself will do that to you," she added casually.

"Five…at the same time? Cool! Let me see," Ben said excitedly.

"No! Don't go i-" Melissa began, but she was too late; Ben had already seen the twelve plus dead bodies. The color drained out of his face and he scrambled frantically for the trash can by the door.

Melissa waited for the gagging noised to subside before she continued to speak to him, "You done now?"

Still very pale, Ben looked over at her. _That innocent air about him seems a little less potent now_, she thought sadly. "Yes," he said blankly.

"Ok then help me carry Jacen down to the cafeteria, he looks like he will be out for a while." They each grabbed him by an arm and partially lifted him into the air, allowing the metal around his heels to create a screeching noise as they dragged Jacen down the hall.


	6. Starting From Scratch

**Chapter 6: Starting from Scratch**  
(April 5th --- 1 day after Outbreak)

"Uuugh," Jacen uttered as he sat up in his bed in and looked around. The bed made sharp crinkling sounds as he moved, glancing down he noticed it was covered in a thick type of paper. _Why the hell am I sleeping on paper_, he asked himself. "For that matter why is this room so annoyingly white?" he added out loud.

The noise caused a figure to stir in the corner. The figure, who Jacen knew was obviously female due to telling physical attributes, had long copper-red hair which, at the moment, was covering her face. Finally awake enough, the girl looked over at Jacen and gave him an impish smile. "Well, well, looks who finally decided to wake up," Kelsey said teasingly.

"So… where am I exactly?"

Kelsey stood up and walked over to Jacen's bed. "Oh, well you're in the nurses office," she said, beginning cheerfully then switched to a lower tone, "Melissa brought you here after the…err, incident."

The words sparked remembrance in Jacen, the memories from the last day flooded back into his mind. "How many?" he asked solemnly.

"What?"

"How many people went to their death on my orders?" Jacen snapped back.

"Jacen do you know how many more would have died if you hadn't organized everyone…" Kelsey said, trying to avoid the point.

"Damn it Kelsey; how many?"

Kelsey lowered her gaze before responding. "We lost ten outright in combat and twenty one later due to infections from getting bitten by the creature. More than half of the dead died after the fighting was over," she said sadly. "I was talking about it with my biology teacher earlier; she said that it was much too fast and added taht as a precaution we should burn the bodies to protect ourselves..." Kelsey finished, trailing off as she found that Jacen was not paying attention to what she was saying

Jacen looked at his hands and started to tremble. "Thirty one…" he began, almost whispering, "I killed thirty one peop-"

That was as far as he got before Kelsey slapped him hard across the face. "Damn it Jacen! Stop wallowing in self pity and get it together," she yelled angrily; her impish grin now replaced with a scowl, "and if you don't get it together now, all their deaths will have been for nothing!"

Shocked, Jacen rubbed the side of his face where Kelsey had hit him. "W-what do you mean… why me?"

"Jacen, you're a hero." Kelsey replied in a soothing voice. "You're a hero for alerting the school, a hero for rallying us, a hero for…" she trailed off.

"A hero for killing five of those things if a murderous frenzy?"

"Yes," she said flatly, "that too; and as the schools hero everyone is expecting you to take the charge and continue to lead us forward."

"Well when you put it that way," Jacen began somewhat wearily as he stood up; working against the burning pain in his limbs, "I suppose I have to; if for no other reason than making the sacrifices of those who died mean something."

* * *

"What about sanitation?"

"What about it?" Jacen asked quizzically as he looked at the speaker at the other end of the table. It was Kelsey's biology teacher, a young woman in her mid twenties called Mrs. Lipinski, who was one of a total of nine people that Jacen had assembled in the science office -_three hours ago-_ to figure out how exactly they where going to survive. It was a painstakingly slow method but they where making progress.

"Now that we have secured the school, our biggest enemy is going to be bacteria," she said matter-of-factly as she pushed her glasses up with her index finger. "Think about it; once the water pressure goes we will be left with no way to bathe or to go to the bathroom."

"Yes, that would be a problem," Jacen stated dryly. "So what would you propose then?"

Mrs. Lipinski sat up in her seat and folded her hands together on the table. "I suggest we turn the indoor swimming pool under the auditorium into a communal bath. It would be a relatively simple task; all you would need to do put up a divider. The only issue would be heating the wat-"

"I think I know how to deal with that," an old man next to Mrs. Lipinski blurted out. "We could wrap a section of the pump system with Nichrome wire. Run an electric current through it and the wire will heat up; causing the water to heat up as it goes through."

"Do we have Nichrome wire Mr…. umm it's Mr. Smith, correct?" Jacen asked, impressed by the amount of ingenuity the teachers where showing thus far.

"Yes, and to answer your question, no we do not have any Nichrome wire, but we do have Nickel and Chromium, which Nichrome is made of. It would be easy enough to make, but would require most, if not all of the schools supplies of the stuff to make the amount needed."

Jacen let out a long sigh, _that's one problem down_. "Good. Now that that is out of the way let's focuse on weapons and armor. Mr. Spada, did you make that dagger you lent me?"

"Yes," he replied flatly, getting horrified looks from the other teachers in the room.

One stood up and pointed accusingly at the metal shop teacher. It was Mrs. Petri, the vice-principal. "What the Hell where you doing making weapons in a school! I should fire you right now."

_Why did I invite her?_ Jacen asked himself. _Oh yes, I didn't invite her; I only invited useful people, she just showed up at the door and insisted that she be included._ Jacen never liked her much; as vice-principal she had been in charge of disciplining students and treated all who entered her office like ex-convicts. "Mrs. Petri, may I remind you that you can not fire him, because to be totally honest you have no power with which to do so," Jacen said in a deliberately mocking tone.

"That's it! I will not allow you, a _student_, to run this school," she began angrily and then pointed at Mr. Miller; he had been invited here for his knowledge of political science, but he also happened to coach the football team. "You; take him out of here and see to it that he is locked somewhere where he can not cause trouble."

Mr. Miller didn't move and acted as if she wasn't there. Frantically Mrs. Petri began looking at the other teachers in the room, searching for support. One by one they averted their gaze as she rambled on.

They let her go until it became clear that she had no intention of stopping anytime soon, at which point one teacher stood up and glared firmly at her. "That is quite enough Vicky!" the environmental sciences teacher yelled in a booming voice. "This boy has done a good job thus far, and I see no reason why he should not continue to run things as long as he exercises good judgment. Now sit down and be quiet or I will personally escort you out of the room!"

With her attempt at a takeover an utter failure, Mrs. Petri sank back into her seat. "Let's continue, shall we?" Jacen began, trying to refocus the group. "Mr. Spada would it be possible to begin producing a significant number of weapons?"

"It is possible; we would need a forge -I can probably make one- and materials. I believe that the junkyard in town would provide all that we could ever need."

Jacen nodded approvingly. "The Junkyard will be a problem since we do not have direct access to it, but it isn't undoable. What about armor; and more specifically, chain mail?" he added.

Mr. Spada shook his head. "I could make chain mail, but it would take one person a week to make a single suit."

"What if you took on apprentices?"

"I was getting to that," he began positively, seemingly pleased that Jacen was thinking along the same line is him. "I actually have two apprentices already; they approached me this morning and where very umm… enthusiastic about learning the ropes. Im going to teach them first and then they can help me teach others. We can probably have around a dozen people going at it by August."

A few minutes later the meeting concluded after Jacen gave his support for various projects. Kelsey entered the room just as the last teacher was filing out. "How did it go?" she asked as she took a seat next to him.

"Rather well I think; overall the teachers seem willing to let me run things and we got a lot of needed planning out of the way…"

"But?"

Jacen chuckled to himself; she had always been good at reading body language. "I need to be officially in charge before I can really start doing anything."

"Assembly?" Kelsey asked questioningly after a short period of silence.

"Yes"

* * *

"No!" Jacen exclaimed as he stood waiting behind the curtains of the auditorium, "I will not wear the suit out there. If im going to end up leading these people, I need them to choose me because they believe in my abilities, not because they are impressed by a shiny suit of armor!"

"But…" Kelsey began, and then let out a stressed sigh. "Ok have it you're way," she pouted before stomping off, clearly upset that Jacen had chosen to wear long cargo pants and a slightly wrinkled dress shirt that he had snagged from the lost and found. As his self appointed PR manager he supposed he couldn't blame her for being upset but at the same time hoped she would come to understand his decision.

_Almost time_, Jacen thought nervously as he glanced up at a nearby clock. One hour ago after they had left the science office Kelsey had gone on the loudspeaker and announced that there would be an assembly to sort out some 'things'.

A blond girl approached Jacen hurriedly, clinging to a clipboard and wearing a headset with a microphone on it. "Two minutes Mr. Bennett, please be ready to walk on stage," she said before running off, yelling into her microphone.

_This is all unnecessary,_ Jacen thought with a mental sigh as he took his place; his request for an informal setting had been ignored by the head of stage crew, who had insisted that Jacen at least make a dramatic entrance. _I wonder if Kelsey had anything to do with that…_

To his right a small red bulb blinked twice, indicating he had five seconds. "Showtime," Jacen mumbled to himself as he began to walk onstage, large lights illuminating the podium in front of him.

* * *

"Im going to go out on a limb and guess that he wouldn't use the chain mail," Melissa said, commenting on Kelsey's scowl as she stormed over and took a seat to her right.

"You would be correct," Kelsey replied, with venom in her voice and then sighed deeply in defeat. "He really has changed…" she added, trailing off.

Melissa snapped her fingers. "Damn," she began sarcastically, "so much for using him as a puppet."

"Melissa!" a quiet voice to her left snapped accusingly. "How could you talk about Jacen like that? He's our friend" Olivia continued, not catching the sarcasm in Melissa's voice.

Both girls looked at Olivia, astonished that she had yelled at anyone, let alone Melissa; Kelsey was the first to speak. "Yes; we are Jacen's friends Olivia, and so are you… though I do begin to wonder if you want to be more than that," she said, her impish grin back in all its glory.

"No, I--I don't like Jacen," Olivia exclaimed, waving her hands back and forth anxiously as her face lit up like a Christmas tree. _You where never that good of a liar_, Melissa thought, knowing her friend all to well.

Just then the massive lights in the back of the room turned on, illuminating the podium. The lights did what the stage manager had expected them to do, causing the whole crowd to quiet and give their undivided attention to Jacen as he walked up.

Blinking his eyes rapidly in an attempt to adjust his eyes, Jacen stepped behind the podium; wrinkled shirt and all. _Speak of the lucky devil_, Melissa thought; trying to imagine what Jacen and Olivia would be like as a couple, _it could work… though he would need to learn to dress a little better._

Jacen cleared his throat loudly into the podium's microphone, indicating he was about to start. "Everyone, I have assembled you here for one main reason; I want us to leave this room united as one, under a government with laws and order," he began, getting off to a good start in Melissa's opinion.

"I understand that many of you would like me to run things and I will if you want me to, but before I take control I want to make one thing crystal clear: In order get us out of this mess I will need the power to authorize what is needed and I cannot have that power unless you support me; listening to me when times are good or bad, even when you don't fully understand the reasoning behind my decision," he finished, pausing for a moment to catch his breath. "Now I ask you; will you let me do what is needed to turn this school into a nation?" The crowd erupted into cheers of approval.

"Was that a campaign speech or an acceptance speech?" Melissa asked in genuine puzzlement as she leaned over the arm of her seat so her best friend could hear.

"I--I don't know," Olivia replied sounding slightly overwhelmed as she continued to look wistfully at Jacen's form up on the stage.

"Long live Lord Bennett!" a voice yelled from behind them. It caught on like wildfire and soon the whole crowd was repeating it. "Jacen is going to kill me, but look at his expression and tell me that's not funny." the voice said in a much more quiet, yet amused voice.

Turning around Melissa say a slightly overweight boy wearing a navy blue shirt which said "rouges do it from behind" on it. He was talking to another boy next to him who she recognized from a track meet. "Excuse me," Melissa said, trying to make her voice heard over the crowd, "do you guys know Jacen?"

The one who had yelled stopped talking to his friend and looked at her. "Why yes, Jacen hangs out with us a lot at my place and plays my X-Box," he replied kindly. "My name is George, and my silent friend over here is Alex… and I believe you're name is Melissa; you fit the description Dave gave me when he told me about what had happened."

"Description," Melissa exclaimed, her voice faltering slightly. "W--what did he say?"

George smile broadened. "I probably shouldn't be repeating this, but hell; by the time Dave gets to me I'll already be protected by a full body cast courtesy of Jacen. Ok so lets just put it this way, as he told me about you he used words like angle, cute, and…err, soft."

His smile grew even more as he recognized her reaction. "What are you smiling at now?" Melissa demanded.

Olivia, who had up until now been silently listening, leaned over and cupped her hand around Melissa's ear so the boys could not see what she was whispering. "Melissa you're blushing," she said informatively. _What the hell? I don't blush, I just don't. Stop it, stop it, stop it!_ Melissa exclaimed in her head, which only caused her face to redden even more.


	7. A Return to Normalcy

**A/N:** A cookie to anyone who knows where I got this chapters title from.

* * *

**Chapter 7: A Return to Normalcy **  
(May 3rd --- 28 day after Outbreak) 

"I really need an assistant," Jacen said to no one in particular, since he was the only one in the room. He had been working night and day with little sleep for almost a month now and was starting to get worn down; but he kept going. _It could be worse,_ Jacen thought to himself, _if I didn't have other people running specific parts of the school I would have to do everything._

Jacen leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, just taking a moment to relax; but a moment was all that he got because only a second after he closed his eyes someone knocked at the door to his office. "Come in," he said wearily as he sat up and did his best to look presentable.

The door began to open slowly, creaking as it went. "Hello Jacen how are you to-" Mrs. Lipinski stopped mid sentence, seeing exactly how he was doing. "… Wow, you look like crap," the biology teacher commented; teachers had become more and more casual, slowly abandoning the self restraint they had used while in the presence of students for so many years.

"Thanks," Jacen replied mordantly.

"You know you really should thing about getting some help, running all of Intrepid is only going to get harder as we get bigger." Intrepid was in fact the name of the micro nation that had been Bestine Academy; the voting process had taken forever but Jacen hadn't had much other choice. In the beginning the teachers where watching him like hawks, just waiting for Jacen to do anything that could be considered tyrannical in nature. After Jacen showed that he was in fact doing a good job of it, many did loosen up and allow him space to breath. Of course not all of them had; some thought that -as adults- they should be running the show; that specific handful of teachers formed a group of their own, being led by none other than Mrs. Petri.

Jacen nodded. "I was just thinking the same thing before you came in. So anyways, what's up?"

"Oh nothing much…" she began innocently, and then paused for dramatic effect. "I just thought you would like to know that the communal bath is done."

"Thank God!" Jacen exclaimed, feeling refreshed by the news. It was a big deal; the water system had gone out about a week after the outbreak, making the building's shower systems useless.

Mrs. Lipinski smiled, clearly proud of her teams accomplishment; the communal bath had been her first job as head of sanitation and she had gotten it done with surprising speed. "Yes, it is a large step towards preventing disease. But what I want to know is if you have enough electricity to power it already. We're ahead of schedule; will the grid be able to handle us?"

Jacen sighed and began digging through a pile of papers to his right. _Ah, here it is_, Jacen thought to himself as he pulled out the most recent report from Mr. Kornak; the environmental sciences teacher who ran Intrepid's entire power grid. "It says here that fifteen of the twenty five exercise bikes that we have are converted and plugged, they are being manned eighteen hours a day in shifts."

"The bath will need six of those to power it."

"That can be done," he began, slightly taken aback by how much power this thing needed. "I suppose I could convince Melissa to lengthen the amount of time she trains people on the bikes."

"How is that going by the way?" The biology teacher asked casually.

Jacen yawned and ran a hand through his hair. "It's a big job, running training programs for a couple hundred people buts so far she has been doing an excellent job of simultaneously getting people into shape while training the Defense Force and Police in Krav Maga."

Mrs. Lipinski nodded and looked at her wristwatch. "Well I suppose I should be going, we are going to do a test run this evening…" she began, before getting a far off look that indicated something had just occurred to her. "You should get a few of your friends and come by; what would be better than having Jacen and company breaking it in. Plus you look like you could really use it. Bye!"

_It's an interesting idea_, he mused as she walked out the door, _god knows I need to relax_. Jacen looked back to his pile of papers and was reaching for the first one when Mrs. Lipinski called to him from the hallway. "You have a visitor waiting to see you."

"Great," he muttered to himself. "Well come on in then," Jacen said, much louder in his usual cheerful leader voice.

A small girl walked in, covered from head to toe in soot. "I was sent to bring you to the forge -cough- if you would please follow me -cough- I will tak-"

"No, that's ok," Jacen interrupted as he got up from behind his desk. "I know the way, now why don't you go down to the nurse's office and get that cough checked out; oh and tell the nurse that I said to give you a handful of surgical masks for you and everyone else in the forge to use," Jacen added kindly before the girl ran off. _Thank God the bath opens tomorrow_, Jacen said mentally as he thought about how dirty the girl had been.

* * *

_The halls are still crowded_, Jacen noted as he walked towards the forge. This had been a normal thing for the last month, but a few days ago the head of the history department had been looking over a schematic of the campus and found that there was a bomb shelter from the cold war under the 'mini-lake' that connected the boys dorm, the C building, and the girls dorm. All they had to do was tear down a wall that had been built over the entrance and they had access to both dorms. 

There had been the issue of fortifying the dorms, but that was accomplished with far fewer casualties than when they had secured the school. _Yet two more names for the wall of hero's_, Jacen thought sadly before quickly replacing the thought with a better one, _well at least we don't have to use bucket brigades any more_. People who had been in the bucket brigade had the most dangerous job in Intrepid; every day they would make a run for water in the open, guarded by people from the Defense Force. Thankfully such actions where no longer needed to since they where able to install a reverse pump by drilling through the top of the bomb shelter and creating a line directly to the water.

As he reached for the doorknob to the forge, it suddenly swung open, slamming right into Jacen's face. "Sorry," a deep voice called as a boy ran off down the hall holding a wrench and some duck tape.

"Where's the fire?" Jacen asked as he entered the forge rubbing his hurt nose.

"Not fire; water-" a voice to his right said before cutting off abruptly. "-where's the water," another almost identical voice finished matter-of-factly.

Looking towards the source of the sound Jacen found the Carlson twins, both their faces blotched with soot like the messenger who had told him to come down here. Each was wearing a heavy duty blacksmiths apron and, like all of their other clothing, they had personalized it so that Kat's apron had a sun and Erika's had a moon. "What are you two doing here," he asked in bewilderment. "And what was that about water?"

"We are the head apprentices, so it would make sense that we would be here," Kat explained teasingly, in one of twin's rare moments where one of them spoke a full sentence.

"And the boy you ran into was Matt, he was heading to fix the leaking reverse water pump in the bomb shelter… you know that thing is too complex for its own good," Erika added with a hint of annoyance.

Jacen glanced around the room. "Where is Mr. Spada? He sent a messenger telling me to come down."

The twins looked at each other and giggled. "Mr. Spada is off having a much needed break, but-" Erica began, leaving her sentence open for Kat to finish. "-he didn't send for you, we did."

"Oh, ok…so what's up then?"

"We wanted you to see the first finished batch of swords." Erika said as the two separated to either side of a table they had been standing in front of. Jacen approached the table and looked upon the twelve symmetrically laid out weapons as the twin's watched his every move, waiting on baited breath.

He picked up the nearest one and unsheathed it from its wooden scabbard. It was a modified Roman style gladius; slightly longer than normal at around three foot two. Jacen had wanted Katanas but quickly found that making a useful one was beyond their grasp at this point.

"We have a test log set up if you want to try it," Kat blurted out, no longer able to contain her anticipation; Erika gave her a stern look. _This is good for them… they are finally becoming individuals_, Jacen thought approvingly.

"Sure, I would enjoy that," he said diplomatically. They led him to a back room where there was a small log sitting up on the table and waited in the doorway as he approached the log. Jacen lifted the sword up and slashed downward in a horizontal cut; the blade embedded itself three inches into the wood. Much to his horror Jacen found himself automatically trying to figure out how far the sword would go into a zombies head or neck.

Jacen pulled the blade out and examined the edge where it had hit the wood. _Still looks as good as new_, he thought to himself. "Good job." The twins looked overjoyed, and for once Jacen was pleased to see it wasn't hero worship; they where just happy that their work was satisfactory.

As Jacen walked to the door he stopped, remembering what Mrs. Lipinski had said. "Oh I forgot: This won't be announced till later today but the communal bath will open tomorrow, only…"

"And?" they asked in unison.

"-I have also been invited to a special private test run tonight and was told to bring friends; So I am inviting you two and all the other people in the forge to reward you all on a job well done. Of course Gina, Olivia, Kelsey, and all the others will be invited as well," he added to maximize the effect.

Kat and Erika jumped up and down in excitement. "Yes!" they screamed in unison, acting as if they just won the lottery.

"Ok well I'll be going then. Have a good day, and give Mr. Spada my compliments." Jacen said as he left, the twins still cheering with glee as the door shut behind him; he yawned as he walked away. _Now to get myself an assistant_... _after I check on food supplied _


	8. The Radio pt 1

**A/N: **Warning - There is some fluff in this chapter, not much, but some. Also for those who think this had been going to slowly, wait no longer; things will begin to accelerate next chapter.

I edited chapter 7 as well.

* * *

**Chapter 8: The Radio - Part 1**  
(May 3rd --- 28 day after Outbreak) 

"Next!" Jacen called as he sat at his desk. A girl with long blond hair walked in and took a seat in front of him. "Hello, Mrs.… Benson," he began after looking at the final name on the list. "Umm, what makes you think you would be qualified for the position of being my assistant?"

She flipped her hair back and gave Jacen a disgustingly fake smile. _Great! Another power hungry floozy_, he thought, letting out a near inaudible groan. "Well," she began, acting like the job was already hers and that the interview was just a formality. "I was the head cheerleader, and I had straight A's, and I was the vice president of the student council and …"

To Jacen's horror she just kept droning on and on. _I can' take it_, he concluded, _im going to go insane._ "That's enough Mrs. Benson; I will let you know if you got the job," he said tersely, on the verge of loosing his cool. _Well that was the last one_, Jacen noted as he glanced at the list, _no assistant for me._

Jacen picked up a glass of water from the table and took a swig, wishing with every fiber of his being that it was a beer. That was unlikely to happen though since this had been a school and the small amount of alcohol that might have been floating around at the time of the outbreak would either have been consumed or jealously hidden by now.

Leaning back in his chair, Jacen let out a troubled sigh; he had been interviewing people for two and a half hours, and before that he stopped by the cafeteria to check on the food stocks; which he had done after his visit to the twins in the forge. All in all Jacen was exhausted. "Um, excuse me," a soft voice called from the hallway. "May I come in?"

"Yes. Yes, come in," Jacen replied weakly as he began to rummage through his desk. "Please have a seat; I will be with you in a moment."

Jacen heard the sound of footsteps as the figure got closer and took a seat. _There you are you stupid pencil_, he thought triumphantly as he closed the drawer and sat up. "So what can I do for…you…" he began and then slowly trailed off; pleasantly shocked to find Olivia sitting in front of him.

"My God Jacen, what happened? You look terrible," She blurted out after getting her first good look at his face.

"So ive heard."

Realizing what she had just said, Olivia covered her mouth instinctively as if that would make the words go away. "I--Im so sorry, I didn't mean to-"

"No, its ok; your not the only one to notice. It's just been a long month," Jacen added wearily. "Anyways, how can I help you?"

Olivia held up one of the flyers that Jacen had put up on the jobs board. "I wanted to apply to be your assistant," she answered nervously, sounding as if she had been practicing the line.

Jacen smiled, happy that someone had thrown him a bone. _Well I wanted beer, but a cute assistant is just as good_. Caught up in his own thoughts, Jacen forgot to answer.

"Am I too late?" Olivia asked sadly, misinterpreting Jacen's silence.

"No-no, not at all," Jacen began frantically. "In fact you are by far the most capable person to ask for the job; if you want it, it's yours."

* * *

"I--It's mine?" Olivia asked in disbelief; she had spent the last hour practicing for the interview in the mirror, making sure everything was just right. "Don't you need to… you know; interview me first?" 

Jacen shrugged dismissively. "Why would I? We where lab partners for three months and in that time you always did what was needed fast and well."

Olivia's disappointment about the interview was quickly replaced by pride from being praised by … _What is he to me?_ She asked herself, _is he my friend, my hero, or_... _is it something else?_ "Thank you," Olivia replied happily, putting her thoughts away for later. "I will do my best to be of help to you."

"Olivia, please there is no need to be so formal, I want you to be able to be comfortable around me," Jacen added, with a hint of sadness. _It must be hard to be a hero of the people_, Olivia decided; _he is constantly surrounded by people who look up to him, but do any ever get past the admiration and become real friends._

She nodded, her mind now set on a course of action. "OK then, so I am now your assistant, correct?" Jacen nodded. "Well then, as my first act as your assistant I am requiring you to go get something to eat," Olivia finished, trying with moderate success to copy Melissa's forceful attitude.

"Come again?" Jacen asked, bewildered by Olivia's change in personality.

Olivia stood up. _Think like Melissa; you where always good at acting. You can do this_, she told herself. "Part of my job as your assistant is to make sure you don't die of exhaustion," she said with authority as she walked around the desk and pulled him by the arm. "Now let's go." Every instinct Olivia had gotten over the years screamed at her to let go and turn red like a tomato, enticing her with thoughts of going back to her comfort zone.

It didn't work because as she pulled Jacen out of the room Olivia felt truly happy; happy because in her heart Olivia knew that she had just taken the next giant leap towards overcoming her near paralyzing shyness towards boys.

* * *

"Now you wait here," Olivia said and trotted off to get Jacen something to eat. Jacen did as he was told, and sat there looking at the table trying to pretend that every person the room was not looking at him; which was really not that many people. It was five in the afternoon, so people would just beginning to leave their shift, and it was still an hour until dinner was served, so the only people here where those who had nothing else to do. 

_Nevertheless_, he thought, _this is embarrassing_! When Olivia had dragged him through the cafeteria doors, everyone looked at him; all clearly amused that the head of Intrepid was being pushed around by a girl smaller than he was. Oddly enough though, Jacen also felt relieved in a way; he couldn't place exactly what he felt relieved about or why it was so intense but he was glad it was there

Olivia returned a couple minutes later, placing two trays on the table. "They didn't have much ready for dinner just yet, but Martha was able to snag a cheeseburger for each of us," Olivia said triumphantly and sat down opposite to Jacen; again he was reminded that this had been a school before the outbreak, so food was generally of this type, although the portions had been drastically reduced. _Yet another problem I should be able to fix…_

As he swallowed the initial bite of his burger Jacen realized that he was indeed hungry and finished his before Olivia had finished her second bite. "When was the last time you ate?" she asked with concern after watching Jacen inhales his food.

"Two days ago… at breakfast," Jacen conceded.

"Jacen; you can't do that to yourself!" Olivia exclaimed in a high pitched voice full of worry. She split her burger in two and handed the larger piece to Jacen. "Have part of mine… and don't even think about saying I need it more, because I don't. I actually had breakfast _this morning_."

"Thanks," he said meekly before graciously eating the food. _Her company is nice_, Jacen admitted, _I haven't really sat and talked with anyone like this in a while_.

They both stayed and talked for a while after that, catching up on what the other had been up to. Throughout the conversation Jacen felt at least partially revitalized, though he didn't know whether to attribute that to the food or something else. He also told her about the communal bath and, after explaining that the boys and girls would be out of sight of each other, Olivia agreed to come, her embarrassed blush back in all its glory. Then they parted ways, but not before Jacen assured her that he would take a nap prior to going to the 'test run' later that evening.

* * *

_  
Ahh, home sweet home_, Tom thought to himself as he unlocked the door to his room. "Hello Steve." 

Steve looked up from the book he that he had been reading intently. "Oh; good afternoon Tom."

"So what are you reading today?" Tom asked as he took a seat on his bed to untie his shoes. This type of thing had become a type of ritual for the two since the outbreak. It didn't really make much sense to Tom but somehow repetition was comforting to him.

"I checked out a biography on Teddy Roosevelt," Steve replied; since the outbreak reading had become much more popular and as a result the library was a great deal more active than it had been before the outbreak. This was highly encouraged by George Havel, who worked to keep up the overall morale of Intrepid from his office in the guidance department. It was a rather important job, George had to keep people entertained and distracted from the constant, collective moans of the undead wandering around outside. 

With his shoes now resting at the foot of his bed, Tom stood up and walked over to his desk, where an old looking box connected to a much newer headset sat waiting for him. "Is that so," Tom said inattentively as he took a seat and put the headphones on; careful to place the microphone just right so that he could talk if he found anyone to talk to.

This was Tom's ritual; every day after work he would gat back to the dorm and exchanged pleasantries with Steve before he would sit down at his desk for and continue to systematically search through all broadcast frequencies the radio could tune into. The radio had belonged to his grandfather, who had operated it during World War Two. Tom inherited the radio when his grandfather had died two years ago, and forgot until about a week ago when everyone had been allowed back to their dorms. He had found the radio as he searched through the closet looking for anything useful.

With the turn of a knob the radio came to life, hissing with static. Tom continued the search from where he left off. _Nothing_, he noted with irritation as he rotated the analogue dial, slowly going from one channel to the next; giving each one just enough time to make sure that there was nothing.

_Why do I even do this_, he asked himself, _I wont ever find anythi_- Toms subconscious brought all thoughts to a halt, registering a distinctly non-static noise that his headphones had played. For the first time ever he turned the dial backwards while actively listening for the new noise.

"There!" Tom exclaimed, making his roommate jump.

"What the hell?" Steve asked, rather annoyed that his reading time had been interrupted. "Did you hear something?"

Tom didn't answer; he was too focused on the person talking on his radio. "Oh shit," he said eventually in hushed voice, more to himself than anyone else.

Placing his headphones the table, Tom stood up and ran out the door. _I have to get to lord Jacen_, he thought as he frantically dashed down the hall.


	9. The Radio pt 2

**Chapter 9: The Radio - Part 2**  
(May 3rd --- 28 day after Outbreak)

"Wow," Mrs. Lipinski managed to say when Jacen and company arrived. "I know I said to bring some friends, but fourteen people… The more the merrier I suppose; just be nice to the technicians."

Jacen nodded gratefully and filed off through one entrance with Dave, George, Alex, Mr. Spada, Ben, and Joe the technician; while Kelsey, Olivia, Gina, the twins, Melissa, where being led by Mrs. Lipinski through the other.

"Up ahead is the locker room where you will stash all your clothing before continuing," Joe said as they walked, assuming the role of tour guide; finishing just as the hallway widened out into a room filled from wall to wall with lockers.

"Where are the stalls?" Ben asked hopefully as he entered the room. Jacen had to fight to keep himself from laughing at the kid; trying to keep in mind that Ben was young, given that he had skipped a grade level. Since the outbreak Ben had essentially become his adoptive younger brother. Jacen did his best to check in on him from time to time -when he could- but hadn't seen much of him as of late.

Joe waved a hand dismissively in the air while he continued to a locker. "There are no stalls," he said and then began to take off his shirt.

"Oh…"

Finished taking off his shirt, Joe stuffed it in his locker and turned around. "There is a bathroom in the hall we just came down; if you want you can change in there."

"Thanks," Ben replied happily before running down the hall.

Five minutes later they where all ready to enter so Joe called them over and pointed at one of two thick doors. "The one to the left is the entrance to a small chamber where you will find a hose; hang your towel up and spray yourself over quickly, then proceed to the bath once you have retrieved your towel… yes?"

"Why do we have to go through that chamber?" George asked after Joe saw his hand in the air.

Joe sighed loudly, visibly annoyed at being interrupted. "You go through the chamber because you are all dirty; if we let people just jump in without at least washing off the initial layering of dirt than the bath would quickly turn into a pit of mud. May I continue now?"

George nodded. "That is the exit," he said flatly as he pointed to the other door. "There are two rules to remember when in the bath: first, no rough-roughhousing, you can play around just don't ruin the relaxation of others…"

"Aanndd?" Matt asked questioningly.

"And if you piss in the pool…" he began darkly, pausing for dramatic effect. "We'll cut it off."

* * *

"Well everyone," Mrs. Lipinski began as she started to take her shirt off, "Lets hurry up so we can continue." 

"What are you doing?" Olivia exclaimed in horror as the teacher continued to disrobe, covering her eyes with her hands. _I thought we where supposed to be wearing bathing suits!_ She thought anxiously, beginning to hear more ruffling noises as everyone else began to disrobe as well.

Now covered by a large towel, Mrs. Lipinski walked over to Olivia and placed a hand on her shoulder. "It's ok, we're all girls here," she said kindly as she user her other hand to push her long black hair out of her face. "Tell you what: since this is bothering you so much, all of us will look away while you change; right girls?"

"Right," they all said, more or less in unison, before turning around. Taking the opportunity, Olivia began to take off her cloths hurriedly.

_Why does she have to be so… so damn curvy?_ Olivia asked herself in one of her rare angry moments, while listening to Mrs. Lipinski as they waited next to the door, _I want curvy!_ She didn't hate the teacher, in fact Olivia found her to be very sweet; she just felt intimidated by the grown woman.

"Hurry up Olivia," Melissa called as she waded into the murky white water. Looking around she couldn't help but notice how steamy the room was, not in the sense of heat -though it was well heated- but in the sense of physical steam which had the effect of blurring details. _Olivia should like this_; she noted mentally, _I can hardly see my feet through the water._

Olivia rushed out of the chamber in a flash of speed, dropping her towel off and jumping into the pool before anyone noticed the door had been opened. She waded next to Melissa and lowered herself down so that only her head stuck out of the water.

"You know you really shouldn't run like that; you could have slipped and cracked your head open." Melissa said absently as she settled into a corner.

"I'll try to remember that…" Olivia began as her head bobbled above the water. "So how was your day? Im sorry I wasn't able to meet up with you at our room but I was out getting a better job."

Melissa, who up until now had only been partially focusing on the conversation, looked over at Olivia questioningly, "You got a new job? You quit being a librarian?"

"Not in that order but yes, yes I did." She replied proudly.

"So what are you doing now?"

"Im sorta... umm Jacen's assistant," Olivia finally managed to get out, before proceeding to lower herself into the water more until it was up to her nose.

Bracing herself on the wall, Melissa prepared to propel herself at Olivia and hug her in congratulations but then thought better of it; _Oh yeah the naked thing…she would possibly pop a capillary with all the blood that would rush to her face._ Melissa eased back into her comfortable corner and gave a knowing smile, "Congratulations!"

"T-thanks, but I don't even know what im doing… all I did today was force him to eat and get some rest," she replied meekly, surfacing to her previous height.

Melissa's Jaw dropped in astonishment. "You _forced_ him?" she asked rather loudly, unintentionally alerting everyone else that something interesting was happening. Everyone made their way closer to Melissa and Olivia, except for Mrs. Lipinski who was relaxing in her own corner.

Olivia began to tell the story of her day, and when she finally finished everyone was staring at her in shock; Kelsey was the first one to recover enough to speak. "So when are you going to ask him out?" she asked bluntly.

Olivia waved her hands back and forth frantically, "This is all a big misunderstanding; all I did was got a job as his assistant; what does that have to do with romance?"

"HA!" Mrs. Lipinski exclaimed from her own little corner. "If I had a dollar for every time a boss became romantically involved with his assistant… well lets just say I wouldn't have been a teacher when the outbreak hit."

"You never said you weren't going to," Melissa commented jokingly, wagging her index finger in the air; then instinctively she jerked around until she was facing the door, which had just slammed open.

* * *

Tom hadn't stopped running since he heard the message over the radio, and when he finally made it to Jacen's office, he wasn't there. The door was locked and there, taped on the doorknob, was a note card which said "Gone swimming." _Where the hell would he go swimming?_ Tom asked himself as he caught his breath; _we haven't even had any extra water to bathe… That's it!_ Still gasping for air, Tom continued on his quest to find Jacen; speed walking as he waited for his second wind. 

The second wind he had been hoping for came as he reached the communal bath; when he got there, Tom had found four people guarding the entrances. _I have to make a run for it_, he decided; _but which door? _

_Left_, he guessed, and ran for his life. Taking the guards by surprise, Tom made it past the door and continued running; not daring to look over his shoulder. Up ahead he saw a thick door and barged through it, knowing that at any moment the guards would catch him.

"Lord Jacen!" he yelled as the door rotated on its hinges and slammed against the wall. Then Tom stopped, instantly recognizing that he had made a horrible error in judgment. "You're not Jacen…" he said, sounding very disappointed for a boy who was in a room full of women without clothing.

* * *

For the most part, Jacen enjoyed the bath quite a lot and hoped that he could stay in forever, but that hope was cut short when a worried looking police officer entered. _Damn and I was having so much fun too!_ "Umm… I think you should come with me," the officer said anxiously. _That's odd, Gina's officers have a bit of a reputation for being tough, but this guy looks like he's about to wet himself._ Jacen had given Gina the job of running the police because she seemed to be just the badass he needed to keep a school full of hormone driven teenagers in line, and in hindsight -so far- it still looked like he made the right choice. 

"Am I under arrest?"

The officer shook his head vigorously. "No, not at all Sir; its--its just that there has been an incident," he replied; Jacen waited silently for him to go on. "You see, a boy intruded into the girls bathing area… and Commissioner Gina was in there at the time. She's mad, really mad and I felt it my duty to inform you -Against her orders- because I honestly don't know what she will do to the poor fellow."

Jacen's initial reaction was to let the guy get taught a lesson by Gina, but he had never actually seen the girl angry and was angry himself that she had tried to keep him in the dark about anything. "What did he think he was doing?" Jacen asked out loud as he stepped out of the water and headed for his towel.

"I believe he was looking for you Sir." The officer replied; seemingly relieved that Jacen would be around in case Gina went postal.

"Crap… Well let me get my cloths on and then we can head out." Now fully wrapped up in a towel, Jacen made his way towards the exit, hearing a dripping noises coming from behind him as others followed suit.

* * *

A half hour later everyone re-met in Jacen's office to hear Toms side of the story. The guy had a black eye from his initial encounter with the girls, but was otherwise unharmed; although Jacen wasn't sure that it would have stayed that way if he had not intervened. 

Tom told them what happened as best as he could but Jacen decided it would be best if they all heard it for themselves and sent Alex to get the archaic radio; a short time later Alex returned and plugged the device into a boom box that they had commandeered from the dance room. Taking a seat in front of the device, Tom made sure that the radio was tuned in to the exact same channel that he had heard the voice on, and then twisted the power knob.

The boom box hissed to life; immediately playing the voice:

"-_breached and we are being forced to -Damn it Walters; speed it up! -  
We are being forced to fall back into the basement and will hold there.  
Ammunition and supplies are running low; all we can do is barricade the  
door and pray help arrives soon… Please, there are children and families  
among us-"_

The voice ended pleadingly before it was cut off by another. "_Sir, all the civilians  
are down below and the men are falling back; its time to go_."

"_Very well,_" the voice conceded, followed by the sound of a switch being thrown.

"_This is Captain Mendez of the 20th Special Forces Group stationed out of  
Pittsburgh. I, along with nine squad members and twenty nine civilians are  
holed up in the National Guard recruitment center in downtown Bestine and  
require immediate assistance. The initial perimeter has been-_"

Tom turned the radio off. "It just keeps looping after that."

"That's what I pardoned you for?" Gina asked angrily. "A month old radio broadcast!"

"You're presuming too much Gina. There is no way to know when that was initially transmitted; it could have been last week for all we know!" Melissa exclaimed.

Gina glared at Melissa; she did not like being corrected. "Why does it matter? Its not like we are going to do anything about it," she looked at Jacen accusingly, attempting to force her will on him. "Are we?"

Everyone looked at Jacen, waiting for him to respond. Jacen was conflicted himself; the whole time he had been listening to the radio, he couldn't help but think back to all the lives that where lost just securing the school. The loss of life had weighed on his conscience ever since, driving him to turn this school into something that made their deaths mean something; every time his stomach rumbled or his eyelids got heavy he would think of those thirty one lives and continue working, ignoring his own physical needs. _Am I really ready to send more people to their deaths…_

…_but if I refuse to help now I would be deciding on the fate anyone else from the outside who asks for help; how can I say one life is more valuable than another?_ "Dave, what do you think of all this?" Jacen asked, as one side of his internal struggle won out. Dave was head of the Defense Forces; he ran all zombie related activities.

"You can't be seriou-"

"Not another word Gina! You overstepped your boundaries when you tried to get around me so you could punish Tom here; you where going to hurt him!" Jacen yelled angrily doing his best to control his anger. "You have voiced your opinion; so shut up and listen!"

Wearing his paintball camouflage outfit, -which had become his uniform- Dave stepped forward. "The Defense Force is up to the task; I have twenty men who I would deem fit for combat," He said proudly. Dave took his Job very seriously, doing his best -with the help of melissa on the side- to turn a hundred semi-trained volunteers into soldiers of the Intrepid Defense Force.

"I need you to choose your eleven best out of those twenty," Jacen began, cooling off now that he vented at Gina. _She deserved it, police officers aren't supposed to use their power for their own personal agenda._

"Why eleven?"

Jacen pointed towards the twins. "They have twelve swords, which make eleven for the troops… and one for me."

Dave's features tightened, clearly upset by Jacen's choice. "NO! There is no way I am going to allow you, the ruler of Intrepid, to run into the meat grinder," he protested assertively.

"As a ruler, I can not and won't ask others to risk their lives if I am not doing the same; also I am worth a handful of people with my shark suit, which, may I remind you, is specifically designed for me," Jacen added as he turned and faced Kelsey, who knew how he felt from their encounter in the nurses office. "Kelsey, in my absence I want you and Olivia to run things conjointly; you can handle the political aspects, and Olivia can keep things organized."

Jacen removed a key from his pocket and slowly walked over to a locker in the corner of the room and placed the key through the lock. "We leave at dawn," he declared as he pulled open the locker door, looking upon his shark suit for the first time since the outbreak.


	10. The City of Bestine

**A/N: **First, I want to thank all the reviewers who have been very supportive. It is appreciated.

Secondly, I changed something slightly in chapter 6. Part of the whole thing I wanted to convey is the learning curve that the students are going through with the zombies, so I dont really have them figure out all the answers from kids who play video games.

* * *

**Chapter 10: The City of Bestine**  
(May 4th --- 29 day after Outbreak) 

_It's almost time_, Sally thought as she glanced out the window of the gym, looking for any creatures that might be lurking about. They had chosen the gym because it was the farthest point away from the creatures concentrated at the front of the school; she, like many others who had participated in the fighting exactly one month ago, felt that calling them zombies was inappropriate. _They are evil hellish creatures_, she thought angrily, _mystical names like that do not belong on anything so horrible._

Subconsciously Sally stretched out one of her heavily tanned arms, feeling around for her pouch of throwing knives. Feeling the reassuring touch of the dark grey pouch at her side, she reached up and ran a hand through her thick raven colored hair. Sally knew that the pouch was there, but it was always safe to check; it had been a gift from Dave when he had appointed her as a Captain in the Intrepid Defense Force and ever since it had been like an extension of her own body.

Hearing a telling metal clanking noise, Sally turned away from the window and headed for Dave and the newly arrived Lord Jacen. He had become a celebrity after the outbreak, and many girls that Sally knew had become obsessed with him, recently they had gossiped jealously about him being seen in the lunchroom with what many had now assumed was his girlfriend. Sally had never been into talking about such things -about celebrities or otherwise- and did not share her friends fantasy's of marrying him and becoming a queen; at the moment as she approached the nation's ruler, all she could see was an ordinary kid.

As she neared the two, the armor clad figure turned and faced her. "Ah, you must be IDF Captain Sally," the ruler said politely.

"And you must be Jacen, Lord of Intrepid," Sally replied with a hint of mockery. "I must say that I disapprove of your title." Dave gave the Captain a sharp look from over Jacen's shoulder.

Much to Sally's surprise Jacen almost fell over laughing. "That would make two of us, the whole Lord Jacen thing is just something that a certain jackass yelled after my acceptance speech, unfortunately it kinda caught on," Jacen replied approvingly after he stopped laughing. "I try to discourage it every chance I get, but the name is like a cockroach, it just won't die."

"Oh… umm sorry about that; I don't know what came over me," Sally apologized as she mentally chastised herself. _You shouldn't make assumptions like that. _Bad_ Sally. No biscuit for you!_

"Think nothing of it, I actually find your candor quite refreshing."

Sally let out an inaudible sigh of relief as Dave's glare ended. "Thanks…I suppose we should be leaving, shouldn't we?" she added after a quick glance at her watch, revealing it was five thirty. _Im going to miss this thing once the battery dies._

* * *

"Damn it!" Jacen muttered to himself, cursing the loud clanking noise the suit with each step as Sally led him and the rest of her comrades closer to Bestine. They had been traveling on foot for nearly three hours now and where within sights of the outskirts of town. So far they had encountered no undead, but that was not too surprising; the area between Intrepid and Bestine was mostly woodlands. Supposedly when the school had been constructed in the late 1960's the founder purposefully built the school ten miles away from Bestine just in case it was nuked, which was a ridiculous notion. _Damn ironic though, since the crazy old coot probably saved all our lives._

They reached the town by eight forty and all stood at the threshold in awe. Jacen had come expecting a mob of hellish creatures around every corner, collectively emitting that horrible moan as they attacked; what they found was just the opposite, and somehow seemed worse to Jacen. The town was empty and devoid of all signs of life, there where no birds chirping, no music blaring out of some jerks stereo, there was nothing but the sound of creatures moaning in the distance.

"This…this changes things..." Sally began as the shock started to wear off, her voice sounding much louder without the background noise that they where all accustomed to. "E-everyone spread out and try to find a few working cars with some keys in it, we can use this to our advantage."

As the ten other IDF troops began to search, Jacen walked up to Sally's side. "Are you sure about this? The noise mig-"

"You said it yourself; you give us objectives and then I figure out how we do it. So let me do this my way," she said coldly, with an air of authority that reminded Jacen of friendlier version of Gina.

"Holy Shit!" one of the younger IDF members yelled, getting the attention of all the others. Everyone drew their swords and raced over. Sally and the rest reached the distressed boy shortly before Jacen, -who was slowed by his armor- obscuring his view of whatever they where crowding around. _Why are they putting their swords away?_

* * *

Sally was the first to reach Andy and arrived ready for a fight, holding the gladius sword in her right hand, and a throwing knife in her left. She found the boy standing at the entrance to a long alley that was cut off by a brick wall roughly twelve feet in. "What is it?" she asked as the others approached. 

Andy pointed to a patrol car that was parked at the end of the alley with a bony finger. "There's a creature locked inside; I was walking over to see if the car was usable when the thing jumped up and rammed its head into the rear windshield."

_Could he even lift that if he needed to?_ Sally asked herself as she looked at the sword sheathed at the thin boy's side; _it doesn't really matter I suppose_, _his job is to run for it if things go bad. Still, Dave could have given the sword to someone who could actually use it. _Sally shrugged the thought off and looked at the car closely, she could make out a bloody smear on the back of window, but there was no creature. "Where is it?"

The IDF member shrugged. "It hit the window really hard; I suppose it could have knocked itself unconscious," Andy pondered out loud. The problem was that no one in Intrepid had much information on the creatures, what they did know was that two times as many people died of a fast acting infection than in combat. That realization came sometime after they had been ordered to burn the bodies on the football field; at the time they had been burning the bodies to prevent any disease from spreading, as ordered by Mrs. Lipinski herself.

"Stay back," she commanded and approached the vehicle, hoping that she could learn something useful; Dave hadn't made Sally a Captain for her knife throwing ability, he gave her the job because she always strived to find out why and how behind a situation.

She found the creature floundering around on the floor of the car with its hands cuffed together. It looked like a business woman in an expensive suit, but to Sally's horror it rolled over, revealing a bullet wound where its heart should be. _But it's still moving…_

Puzzled, Sally looked up and saw another figure slumped over the steering wheel through the fine metal caging that divided the front and back of the car. She walked over to the front passenger side window for a better look, confident that the one in back was contained for the moment. Sally cringed instinctually as she looked at the police officer; _he shot himself in the head… but why?_ She looked over the rest of the police officer, trying to ignore what was left of the poor mans head. Glancing downwards, Sally saw the man's right arm had been bitten; the area around the wound having a deep purple color to it.

Sally also saw a gun on the floor, and -much to the others horror- opened the door, leaning over the passenger seat to grab the weapon. "Sorry, but I need this a lot more than you do," she muttered respectfully and began to get back out, but before she had fully gotten out of the car the creature lunged at the wire caging; catching Sally by surprise. On instinct, she twisted herself around leveled the pistol at the creatures head.

From only three feet away, she pulled the trigger, causing a hole to appear right in between its eyes. The creature collapsed onto the floor of the car, Sally cringed again as she looked over at the crumpled form; the exit wound was nowhere near as neat as she had expected. _Well I am apparently a good shot at point blank range_, she conceded, _but how will I do when they are farther away_?

Hearing the sounds of the pistol going off, Jacen and the rest of the force ran to her with their hands on the hilt of their swords. Andy -being the fastest one present- was the first to arrive. "Are you ok?" he asked with concern.

"Yes, yes. Im fine," Sally said hurriedly as she held the gun up so that everyone could see it. "Now let Jacen through, I want him to take a look at the Police Officers arm." Sally took the chance to look over the pistol as Jacen went back and forth, comparing the officer and the now dead creature. The weapon seemed to be mostly plastic on the outside, and on the sides of the upper square part it had a series of vertical lines protruding out.

Experimentally she pressed one button that was just above the handle, causing the -_what do the movies call that thing? Oh yeah, a clip_- the clip to slide out and fall to the ground. Pressing another, she found that a small thing attached to the weapon shot out a laser; Sally quickly turned that one off and bent over to pick up the magazine. Standing up, she found Jacen looking at her somberly. "Did the Officer kill himself because he was bitten?"

"I think so," she said approvingly, having reached the same conclusion. "The creature in back had a bite mark as well, so I guess that the police officer believed that he was going to turn into one of those creatures and killed himself to prevent it."

"I guess -deep down- I always knew that something like this was behind everything, or at least since I saw the one that looked like… was Walter. You know I really liked him, he gave me free soda's whenever I went-."

Seeing that the Hero of Intrepid's episode was draining the morale out of the others, Sally elbowed Jacen as hard as she could; causing a jolt of pain to shoot up her arm as her elbow made contact with the metal links that surrounded him. The action did have its desired effect, however.

Back in leader mode, Jacen turned to Sally. "Sorry," he said quietly, so only she could hear. "But look, we need to ensure that word gets back to Intrepid."

"Got it," she replied just as quietly, then addressed the others as their Captain; "Andy, Ryan, front and center!" The two made their way over to Sally and waited expectantly. "After we show you what we discovered, you are going to take this car, drive to Intrepid and tell General Dave what you have learned."

"But-"

She shot them a glare for challenging her order. "The keys are still in the ignition, and we will help move the bodies," Sally said with acid in her voice.

Once Sally went over everything that needed to be said, they all began the process of removing the bodies from the car. The first one out was the police officer, who they placed respectfully on the ground. As she did a quick prayer for the officer, three of the others went to the rear door and unceremoniously began pulling the corpse out by the legs; after they got it out of the car they used their feet to kick it to the side.

Something about the way the three treated the body made a chill climb up Sally's spine. As much as Sally detested the creatures, this bothered her; the contrast between the treatments of the two bodies just felt wrong. "What are you doing?" she asked with distaste.

One of the three, a guard named Jay looked up with a puzzled expression. "We are moving the bodies; just like you sai-"

"No! Why are you kicking it?" Sally interrupted, her feelings of revulsion quickly developing into anger.

"What? It's just a creature; getting what it deserves if you ask me," Jay added with a hint of malice.

Bristling with fury, Sally stomped over to Jacen. "You finish up here, I gotta go cool down before I do something they might regret." _It's not their fault_; Sally repeated in her head over and over again as she walked back into the open street, _they don't know any better… but they should._

Five minutes later as the car drove away towards Intrepid, Jacen walked over to Sally. "What was that all about?" he asked worriedly, taking care to speak quietly enough so that only she could hear it.

"Forget it," Sally said coldly as she stood up. "Let's get going."

* * *

** Note:** The gun that Sally found is a standard issue glock and I know that its a magazine, not a clip; she is a sixteen year old girl who gets everything she knows about guns from the movies, so I dont think she would know guns very well. 


	11. Pushing Ahead

**A/N:** Chapter edited and expanded. Thank you to my new friend **reine Seele** who has graciously offered to be my beta.

-raises fancy glass of grape juice- A toast: To a fruitful partnership!

* * *

**Chapter 11: Pushing Ahead**  
(May 4th --- 29 day after Outbreak) 

"I'm hungry," Mark whined for the twentieth time. They had been walking for hours since the encounter with the police car, and many more since any of them had eaten. Add into the equation the fact that they had been on the move all day and you get ten hungry teenagers, although mark was the only one brave enough to bring up the subject with the Captain.

Without stopping or turning around Sally raised her right hand into the air, holding it up for all those behind her to see the middle finger threateningly extended from her fist.

"Wow," Brett commented to Mark as Sally turned right around an approaching corner. "I think you're getting to her, last time she just accused you of having sexual relations with a creature."

"What are you talking about?" Mark asked in confusion as he looked at his friend. "She said -and I quote- that I am 'such an annoying bastard that the only action -I- will ever get is from a zombie.,' and then she said something about me infecting it."

Someone in front of them sniggered. "That's what I said... though I missed that last part."

"No, no it wasn't."

"Well it sounded better that way!" Brett exclaimed defensively. "Anyways, keep going, let's see how far you can push her."

Mark nodded and he began to speak as they rounded the corner. "Im hungry," he called loudly and then pointed at a painfully shiny building with a reflective outer surface. "Look, it's a diner!"

Already two buildings past the diner, Sally stopped and turn to face Mark ten feet away from the next turn in their path. "Damn it Mark! I swear to god that… Hey, what--what are you looking at?" she asked in confusion, noticing that Jacen was staring at something in her direction.

Jacen pointed over her shoulder and was about to speak when he was interrupted by a low, deep moan that reverberated throughout the alley. Over the crowd Mark couldn't see exactly what happened next but in a flurry of movement Sally had spun around and a fraction of a second after that the creature's moan was abruptly cut off as it dropped to the ground with an audible thud.

Sally nonchalantly walked over to the creature, bracing her foot against its chest she bent over and pulled her knife out. Walking back to the group she pulled a piece of cloth out of her pocket and used it to clean blood off the knife. She placed the cleaned blade back in her pouch with the rest and discarded the cloth on the ground. "Daammn," Mark exclaimed with newfound respect for the Captain.

Hearing the comment, Sally focused her attention on Mark. "You know," she began as the joker looked at her fearfully. "I think I'm hungry too, and as a reward for keeping us so entertained today; you're going to cook… for all of us."

"That's cool, I can manage that as long as Brett helps me," Mark said and looked at his best friend pleadingly.

"The Hell I am!"

* * *

"You won't believe this!" Mark said enthusiastically as he placed two covered platters in front of Jacen and Sally. "This place runs on a propane tank, and it's full!" he finished with a glint in his eye and waited expectantly as Jacen lifted his cover. 

"Is… is that chicken parmigiana?" Jacen asked in astonishment; Mark nodded. "A--and that," he said and pointed at something that was murky brown with hundreds of little bubbles rising to the top, "that's not _real_ soda. Is it?"

Mark smiled broadly, pleased with the reaction, and then turned towards Sally as she unveiled her food. "Ohmygod-ohmygod-ohmygod! Its blueberry pancakes; I love you!" she exclaimed with glee as she launched out of her chair and gave Mark a hug, sounding like a girl for the first time since Jacen had met her.

The IFD trooper turned provisional chef looked at Jacen in embarrassment, clearly not expecting this strong of a reaction. _It's a miracle_, Jacen decided as he watched Sally kiss Mark on the cheek, _that in the midst of all that has happened we can still have moments like this._ "Umm Mark, I think something is burning in the kitchen," Jacen mentioned casually, giving the boy a way out.

"My waffle!" he exclaimed and ran into the other room.

"Happy that you changed your mind about stopping here?" Jacen asked after he swallowed the first bite of chicken.

Sally gnawed off another chunk and then looked up at Jacen sheepishly. "Yes," she said in a childlike voice before she continued to eat.

Jacen took a sip of the soda, savoring it with satisfaction. "So," he began trying to make casual conversation, "I couldn't help but notice that you embedded a throwing knife into that creature's eye socket."

"No-duh," Sally snorted under her breath.

"Didn't know anyone made throwing knives," he commented, not hearing that last remark. "May I ask where you got it?"

"Dave _-munch-_ gave it to me as a gift _-munch- _for being promoted to Captain," Sally said while she continued to chew her beloved pancakes, pulling one of the knives out and handed it over to Jacen.

Jacen took the knife from her and looked it over; the whole thing was one long piece of steel that was roughly leaf shaped. Glancing at the bottom of the handle, Jacen noticed that there was a logo of a sun being cradled within a crescent moon. "The twins..." he muttered to himself and handed the weapon back to Sally, who by then had voraciously finished her food.

"Well, you got to ask me something so now I get to ask you a question," she said slyly as she placed her fork down. "One of my friends saw you eating lunch with a girl; so, is she your girlfriend…or your wife maybe?"

"My _-cough- _wife?!" Jacen managed to exclaim as he choked on a piece of chicken while frantically grasping for his soda, drinking the final drop in remorse that he hadn't been able to enjoy it. "Why do you care… you don't… do you?"

Sally laughed heartily before looking at Jacen. "Don't flatter yourself, you're not my type. I just wanted to know since I could use the information to bribe my friends -who are obsessed with you- into doing whatever I want; so who is she to you?"

Jacen frowned in concentration. _Do I have feelings for her?_ he asked himself as he thought back to all of his encounters with her. _I did use myself as a shield to protect her from getting hurt when she fell back, then I hugged her… and I did call her a 'cute' assistant, if only mentally… and when we where talking after she gave me her food, I felt happy._

"Yes."

"'Yes', what? 'Yes' isn't an answer," Sally added in confusion.

Jacen shook his head and refocused on the conversation at hand. "She is my assistant, but I--I guess that there is something more there," he replied in a happy tone, feeling enlightened by the discovery.

"Wow… Err, I didn't expect you to actually tell me," Sally said uncomfortably. "So why tell me?"

"You are the only girl I know who doesn't know her," he said with a slight blush.

Sally looked at her glass of water intently, looking unsure of what to say, then recovered and looked up. "Damn, now I can't tell anyo-" she began before she was interrupted the noise of something shattering, followed by what could only be the moans of a group of creatures. _No…_

Drawing their swords, the group ran towards the kitchen but as they approached, they heard a metallic clicking noise from the closed kitchen door, and found that someone had locked it from the inside. Jacen made his way to the order window and found Mark waiting for them as a wave of creatures walked towards the provisional chef. "Unlock the door!" Jacen begged.

With tears rolling down his face, Mark shook his head sadly and then lifted up his arm, revealing a bite mark. "It was the moan… it called them. Go now," he finished in a whisper and charged the wave with a sword in one hand and a lighter in the other, pushing deeper and deeper into the mass of creatures as he made his way towards something.

"Everyone out the front door!" Sally commanded.

"No!" Jacen bellowed in rage and began to climb over the counter, a familiar primal rage building up within him as something tugged at the edge of his consciousness. _Not again… not another death_…

* * *

"Everyone out the front door!" Sally commanded, hoping the creatures hadn't surrounded the building yet. Then, as everyone else charged out the door, Sally turned towards Jacen and found him yelling in an incoherent rage, trying to climb over the counter. With all her strength she pulled him off, causing both of them to fall back onto the ground. 

Even after they had fallen, Jacen continued to scramble out of Sally's grip. "Let me go!" he yelled and continued to struggle.

**-BANG- **Sally looked up at the door to the kitchen. _That won't hold for long_, she thought frantically, and then slugged Jacen in the face as hard as she could. "Mark… Mark is dead!" she yelled, tears began rolling down her cheeks as Jacen stopped struggling and looked up, the pain seemingly clearing his thoughts.

Taking advantage of the return of Jacen's mind, Sally pulled him up by the arm and led him outside, passing a large Fed-Ex truck parked across the street before entering into an alley where the others stood waiting. Jacen shared a brief glance with them all before continuing on.

* * *

_So close,_ Mark thought desperately as something swiped at his arm, creating another deep gash. "I am already dead," he said to himself, ignoring the pain as creatures attacked him. 

Another grabbed his leg and sunk its teeth deeply into his calf; Mark swung in the general direction of the creature, not caring very much either way.

_Only another foot, _he pleaded and dragged the creature forward, pushing past another group. "I am already dead…, he repeated through the tears, finally catching the delightful smell of rotten eggs that he had been waiting for.

Igniting the lighter, Mark stuck his arm out past the last few creatures blocking his way.

"…and so are you!"

* * *

**-BOOM- **

The ground rattled, followed by an ominous gust of wind. The whole group stopped and looked back, finally understanding what the lighter was for. "He left the gas on…" Jacen said absently.

Sally looked over at Jacen, hoping for support, but only found him staring blankly into space, causing her to feel deeply disturbed._ I can't do this alone_, she thought on the verge of panic, _I'm__not a real Captain… I'm -- I'm just a kid who is in way over her head._

"Umm… Captain," Brett began through a mask of grief as he approached Sally, "we need orders."

Composing herself as best as she could, Sally looked towards the trooper, unsure of what to say. "What do you think we should do Sergeant?" she asked despairingly as the tears slowly began to taper off.

"We have three options as I see it: we can continue on, we can regroup, or we can retreat… I don't support that last one though," the boy finished, holding back a sob as he visibly fought to keep himself under control.

"They could all be dead… What then?"

Brett stiffened and looked into Sally's eyes with purpose. "Then he died for nothing, and we all go home; but I think it would be an insult to Mark if we didn't at least try." _That's right_, Sally remembered sorrowfully, _Brett had been a friend of Mark's, even before the outbreak._

"I agree," she decided with new resolve as a plan started to develop in her mind's eye; like most other students, Sally had taken numerous trips downtown and, as a result, had a fair understanding of the area's layout.

"Listen up everyone!" Sally yelled. "We're going to make our way to the block that the recruitment office is on. There are no gaps between the buildings there, so we should be able to get our shit together in one of the connecting buildings and then" -_hopefully_, Sally added to herself- "make our way to the office from the roof."


	12. Captain Mendez

**A/N: **This is the first chapter pre-edited by my beta **rein Seele**. Thanks rein, this one is dedicated to you.

* * *

**Chapter 12: Captain Mendez**  
(May 4th --- 29 day after Outbreak) 

"_This looks fantastic honey!" Connor exclaimed as he looked upon the oversized bacon cheeseburger that had been put in front of him._

_Andrea leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. "Only the best for my husband," she said with pride as she sat down opposite to him._

"Cap'in Mendez …"

_Connor laughed as he looked up at his wife. "I thought you got over that fixation; I was promoted over four months ago."_

_His wife looked up at him questioningly. "What are you talking about?" Connor froze as he was about to take a bite out of his food and looked over at his wife, then down to his burger again. It was large, juicy, and seemed perfect in every way… it was obviously not Andrea's cooking._

"_Damn it not again!" he exclaimed, catching one last glance at his beautiful wife as the world around him began to fade away._

"Cap'in Mendez," the little girl repeated as she shook the sleeping leader.

Connor's eyes shot open, taking a moment to register that there was a small girl in tattered clothing standing in front of him. "Oh… Hello Suzie; is everything ok?"

"Miss Kenneth sent me to tell you that there was a splosion' outside. I heard it too," she added excitedly it as she threw her arms in the air; "it-it was like BOOM-woossssh." Whit nothing left to add, the little girl abruptly turned and trotted away, her curly chestnut hair bobbling up and down as she went.

With a weary groan, Connor got up and took a few steps towards another sleeping figure with digital camouflage identical to his own. "Walters, get up," he commanded, jabbing his foot into the soldier's midsection when there was no response. "Get up; something exploded outside… apparently."

Groggily the Warrant Officer stirred and looked up, rubbing his side where Connor kicked him. "Huh… Wha--what do you mean 'apparently'? Who was on guard?"

"Freddie was," Connor said unhappily and pointed at another slumbering form at the foot of the stairs that was hunched over an antiquated M1 carbine. Connor sighed inwardly at the sight of the weapon; they had left for Bestine under complex circumstances and they were forced to take only the equipment that would not be missed. _Well, most of it anyways, _he corrected himself, noting the precious amount of C-4 in his pack as well as Walter's MP-5.

Nate Walters played with his unkempt beard in mild amusement as he relished the serene look on Freddie's face; Walters inhaled deeply. "Hey Freddy! Get up, ya lazy bastard!" he yelled from across the dark room, causing Suzie to turn her head for a moment before looking back at the school teacher.

Connor hit Nate lightly across the back of the head. "Did I not specifically tell you to curb your language around the kids?" he asked tersely; Nate nodded. "Good, now _quietly_ go wake up the others."

"We're supposed to bet out lives on an explosion that 'apparently' happened?"

"Look," Connor began in a low whisper that only the Warrant Officer could hear, "We ran out of food last night… I think this is our last chance."

The face behind the fuzzy brown beard tensed. Connor respected that about Nate: the guy was a joker, but when the situation called for him to be serious, he was serious. "What about the civilians?" Nate asked objectively, back in his mission oriented attitude.

Connor looked at Suzie and the others, who where currently being occupied by one of Mrs. Kenneth's stories; even the adults listened attentively. _I don't blame them_, he commented grimly, _what else is there to do in a dark basement that smells like crap?_ "Leave them to me; just get the generator running and everyone up."

"What should I have them pack?"

The Captain looked up into space for a moment and then looked back at Nate. "Everything that they can fit in their packs," he decided. "If we make it out, there probably won't be a chance to come back and if we don't… well it won't matter much either way."

Five minutes later the emergency generator hummed to life, consuming the last drops of fuel to light up the room. _That will probably last for thirty minutes at best_, Connor calculated as he tried to distract himself from then horrific sight of the now illuminated latrine. The latrine consisted of a chair with a hole in the bottom which sat over a bucket, when the bucket filled up they would empty the rancid contents into a larger box… unfortunately said box had become full a week ago.

All the civilians looked up at Connor expectantly; many of the adults in the group had noticed the squad gearing up before the lighting had been turned on, but had rightfully committed themselves to keeping the children distracted up until now. _I hate lying_, he thought angrily, shifting the weight of his pack from one shoulder to another in agitation, _but it looks like I don't have much choice in the matter; I can't exactly tell them that I'm gambling all their lives on a fleeting hope._

"Ok everybody, we are going to get out of here today," he began with a falsely upbeat tone. "I have confirmed that there is a rescue party in the area, so I need you all to pack what you can carry and be ready to go once my men and I clear the way for you."

"We're saved!" someone yelled over the cheers of joy. As Connor watched the others hug and cried with relief, he grimaced, imagining all the happy faces turning into looks of betrayal as they find out there is nothing out there. He knew that wasn't fair; there _could _be someone out there, but to him it seemed unlikely.

The expression only penetrated Connor's mask of confidence for a moment, but that was long enough for a young college student at the edge of the crowd to notice. "Shit," the Captain cursed as -_What's his name? Oh yes, Peter_- as Peter approached him.

"There isn't anyone coming to rescue us, is there?" the boy asked quietly, making sure to keep his back to the crowd.

"Of course there-" Connor began to deny it, but thought better of it and let out a troubled sigh. "No… or at least not with any certainty."

The boy looked at the ground, justifiably upset that he had been right. "Are you going to come back?" Peter asked eventually with suspicion in his voice.

"I would sooner commit myself to burn in the deepest bowls of Hell than abandon civilians…" he began with acid in his voice, genuinely hurt by the accusation. Connor glanced over Peter's shoulder at Suzie, who was presently helping one of the adults pack.

"And orphans?" Peter said sadly, following his gaze. "Sweet girl; it's a real shame about her father."

The Captain sighed heavily. "Yeah, it is…," he said distantly, the memory of the event still horribly clear.

* * *

**Flashback: April 7th --- 3 days after outbreak**

"DADDY!"

Connor dropped the box of supplies he was carrying and ran to the window. Outside, across the street from the office, there was a man helping a little girl up from the sidewalk with more than a dozen of the demons in pursuit, moaning as they approached the pair from all angles. Connor drew his P-226 combat pistol and rushed out the door.

Bracing the weapon in both hands, Connor began to pick off the demons with headshots -he had learned the necessity of that fast- as he approached; moving as fast as he could without sacrificing accuracy. One by one they dropped to the ground, but there were just too many coming too fast and one of them made it to the father. Unable to get a clear shot at that one, Connor continued to methodically shoot the others, increasing his pace as the father struggled to keep the one that made it through away from himself and his daughter.

"GO AWAY!" the girl cried shrilly as one of the two remaining demons neared her; Connor took aim and squeezed the trigger, but only got a hollow **-click-** in response. Cursing inwardly, he holstered the empty pistol and drew his combat knife, breaking into a sprint for the final couple of feet. Connor lunged at the demon, jabbing the knife into the base of its skull.

Not taking the time to retrieve the knife, he let it drop with the demon and balled his hands together. With all his strength Connor brought his hand down like a hammer over last one's head. The neck buckled under the force of the attack and the demon fell limp, silencing the only moan within earshot. "You ok?" Connor asked breathlessly.

The man revealed a small gash on his forearm and shook his head sadly; they both knew he was as good as dead. "Please take care of my daughter, she-she's a good kid," he pleaded in a desperate whisper.

"I will," Connor replied in awe of the man's selflessness.

The man walked over and knelt in front of his daughter. "Suzie, I--I have to go away for a while," he began, doing his best to hold back the tears.

"But daddy… if you go, who will make me lasagna?" she asked with the confused innocence that only a child could have.

He pointed to Connor, who was reloading his pistol. "That nice man over there is going to look after you… behave for him, ok?" The girl nodded obediently and the man enveloped her in a hug. "I will always love you sweetie," he whispered.

_They're getting closer, _Connor thought as a demon moaned in the distance Hearing the moan as well, Suzie's father got up and began to walk away. "Wait!" Connor yelled after the man. Catching up he discreetly handed his pistol to the man; "One bullet."

Understanding what the gun was for, Suzie's father nodded and walked off into an alley, leaving Connor alone with the girl.

The moans drew closer and became more numerous; Connor picked up Suzie and ran towards the recruitment office, hearing the muffled yet distinctive sound of his P-226 firing one last time.

All the squad members stood waiting in the main room; they looked at the girl and then at their Captain. "Barricade the doors!" he ordered. "There are more coming and they might have my scent or something."

As Nate and the others frantically began fortifying the entranced, Connor led Suzie to a couch in a back room and sat her down. She looked at him silently. _Poor thing_, he thought sadly, _must be scared out of her- _"Oh!" the girl said, jumping up and holding her tiny hand out. "I almost forgot to into'duce myself… Daddy wouldn't like that; my name is Suzie Wilson."

Connor's jaw dropped in amazement and he struggled to reply. "Pleased to meet you Suzie, I'm Captain Connor Mendez," he began courteously, shaking the girl's tiny hand in amusement. "Listen Suzie, I gotta go help my men work, but if you need anything, anything at all, you come see me. Sound like a plan?" he added worriedly, concerned that the girl didn't seem upset about her father. _She can't understand what just happened_, he decided as he began to walk away, _that's all._

Suzie nodded and Connor turned to walk away. "Umm… Cap'in Mendez?"

Connor looked back over his shoulder with a warm smile. "Something wrong?"

She shook her head, "No, but… Cap'in Mendez?"

"Yes?"

The girl kicked her tiny legs in the air anxiously and then looked at the ground. "Can--can you make me lasagna?… I'm hungry."

* * *

_Maybe--maybe if we survive this_, Connor speculated as the memories of his first encounter with Suzie faded,_ maybe I could adopt her; I always wanted to be a dad, but Andrea never-_

Nate tapped Connor on the shoulder, waking him from his trance. "Sir," the Warrant Officer whispered into his ear, "everyone's given the green light; after you Sir."

Connor gave Nate the thumbs up gesture over his shoulder from where he stood at the top of the basement stairs and did one last visual check on his L85-A1 rifle. It was another one of the mothballed weapons that had been lying around; he had chosen it because it was heavy and had a metal covering on the stock that would be good for a blunt weapon, though he desperately hoped it would never come down to that. Deep down, in the pit of his stomach, Connor knew that he would have to; no one had any idea how many where out there, but he just knew, and that worried him.

_Doubt is for before and after combat_, Connor reminded himself, shifting gears into a more pleasant thought process. "Let's do this!" he muttered, more to himself than anyone else. He took a deep breath, raised his rifle, and barged into the room.

"Oh damn!" the Captain exclaimed in awe of how many demons where in the room. They were everywhere and, alerted by the noise, more began to surge through the main entrance. Doing the only thing Connor could do, he leveled his rifle at the nearest demon and fired.

His men came into the room and formed a perimeter as they fired in, protecting the entrance to where the civilians where hiding. "We need to cut off the flow!" Connor yelled over the deafening roar of ten guns firing at the same time. "Walters, take Stevens, Hendrickson, Marquis, and Davis and make your way forward. Everyone else, focus your fire down the center; let's cut them a path!"

Responding to instincts drilled into them over years of conditioning, the soldiers did as they were told. Walter's group temporarily fell behind Connor's group's firing line as a path was cut towards the door. "GO!" Connor ordered.

Connor's group's guns fell silent as Walter led his men through the ever shrinking path that had been carved out for them. Connor and the others resumed firing, taking care not to hit their comrades by mistake.

The mass of demons closed behind Walter group, cutting them off from Connor and the others. A scream of pain pierced over the noise. "What was that?" he yelled over the headset system that he was wearing as he strained his eyes to see what was happening. "I can't get a visual!"

"_Stevens is down_," Walters's voice announced. "_We've been routed and are retreating up to the second floor_."

"Got it, do what you can from there." Cursing his inability to help, Connor continued to drop the demons left and right; it was all he could do and glancing down at his bag of magazine's, Connor knew that he wouldn't even be able to do that for much longer.


	13. Guns in the Distance

**Chapter 13: Guns in the Distance**  
(May 4th --- 29 day after Outbreak)

"We leave in thirty," Jacen heard Sally say from the main room of the apartment they now occupied. Just as she had expected, the buildings on this block where connected, but that didn't matter much to Jacen at the moment; all he could think about was Mark and the explosion.

Jacen glanced despairingly at the shark suit folded on the floor next to him. _He might be alive if he had his own armor, I should have given it to him_, he thought irrationally. _It should have been me…_

"But is wasn't, so there is yet another name to added to The Wall," he said despairingly to the empty room. The Wall was the closest thing Intrepid had to a memorial for those who died by the creatures' hands. There where no bodies, no graves, no funerals: just The Wall, where each of the fallen had their name, date of birth, and date of death carved onto a small metal plate. Every death hit Jacen hard. It didn't matter to him that he'd never spoken with most of them, what mattered was that they had died doing what he said; and with each name added to the plate, he felt like he died a little inside.

_How many is that now_, Jacen asked himself and then laughed angrily. _Oh yes, Mark would be number 34_... Not that he found Mark's death funny, but Jacen noticed the harsh irony in the fact that Mark's entire life would now and forever be summarized by a small metal plate on The Wall. _Thirty four and counting, _he corrected.

Hearing Jacen's deranged laugh, Sally walked into the room. Taking one look at Jacen, she closed the door behind her and sat down next to him against the wall, wrapping her arms around her knees. "How are you holding up?" she asked eventually after half a minute of silence.

"Not too bad, not too bad; it's not like I killed thirty four people or anything…," he began in a mockingly upbeat voice and then trailed off. "Oh wait, I did!"

The noticeable imbalance of Jacen's mental state sent chills down Sally's spine. "Jacen, I'm worried about you; you're really starting to scare me."

"What do you care?" he snapped back.

Sally bristled with anger, but then relaxed, knowing people sometimes say things that they don't mean. "I didn't deserve that," she stated coolly. "Over the short time we spent working together on this mission, I've started to respect you; I respect you for what you have done so far, respect you for what you are doing now, and I respect you for what you are going to do."

"Wha--what I'm going to do?"

She stood up and smiled warmly at him. "Yes. Because I know that in the end, no matter how messed up you are on the inside, you're going to put your emotional baggage aside and be there, be ready to fight and save lives," Sally finished encouragingly and then walked out of the room, closing the door behind her.

"That… that was a low blow," Jacen commented to the empty room, feeling weak and emotionally drained. "Appealing to my better nature is just dirty."

"_Yes it was"_, A voice agreed, "_but wouldn't it be so much easier to just give up? Your sword is very sharp; it would be quick, and then you wouldn't have to hurt or worry ever again."_

Jacen nodded dreamily in agreement. "That would be nice, wouldn't it?" he said to the voice, falling into a trance-like state as he reached for his sword.

"**It would also be unacceptable,** **I will not allow it!"** a second, more commanding voice declared. Something about the voice seemed familiar… in a bad way.

"_What the hell are YOU doing here?" _the first voice hissed, sounding upset and angry.

"**I am making sure that you don't kill the boy**."

"_Great… Just great; do you even know what I was-"_

"Who are you; where are you? The room is empty…" Jacen asked and then trailed off as he became aware of the nature of the voices, "Oh…Oh crap, I'm going nuts!"

A shifty looking figure appeared in the room, he looked exactly like Jacen in every way except that he was wearing a jet black jacket overlaid with red flames. _"We have no real names as such…" _it began matter-of-factly.

Another figure materialized, though Jacen didn't know if it qualified as a figure; it was more of a cloud in the shape of a person.**"We just are."**

A third figure appeared in the shape of a rather distressed Olivia; looking prettier to Jacen with her face flushed in irritation. "Why is Olivia in here, though I suppose it's not actually her?"

"What the hell is HE doing here?" she asked angrily to the shifty Jacen; he shrugged and she turned back to the real Jacen, regaining some of her composure. "Anyways… Yes, you would be correct in assuming I'm not Olivia."

"So I _am_ nuts… Right?"

The fake Olivia scrunched her face up in concentration, looking for the most comforting way to put this; she failed. "Err…No, not exactly, but let's just say that you could go either way at this point."

"O-K… so I'm seeing people who aren't there, but I'm not crazy…yet," Jacen added skeptically.

"Is it that so hard to believe?" the fake Olivia asked considerately. "Has our being here not forced you into thinking rationally again?"

Jacen tilted his head in confusion, letting out a breath that he didn't know he was holding in. "You're saying that you intended to scare the crap out of me and Mr. Shifty _wasn't_ trying to get me to commit suicide?"

"_Essentially_," the shifty Jacen said with a sadistic smile.

"Err, thank you… but what about that guy?" Jacen asked pointing to the Cloudman. "I figure that you," he pointed to shifty Jacen, "are my evil side; and that you," he pointed at fake Olivia, "are my good side, but who is he?"

Fake Olivia and shifty Jacen glared at the Cloudman, and then fake Olivia turned back at Jacen. "First, things are never so simple as black and white," she said, pausing to point at shifty Jacen. "Pessimism is not strictly evil…"

"_And Love is not strictly good; both can be positive traits in moderation and bad in excess."_

_Well that explains why she looks like Olivia_, Jacen thought when something occurred to him. "Umm Love, how long have you been around? I didn't know I liked Olivia till an hour ago."

Love spaced out for a moment, thinking hard about how to put it into words. "Well technically I got promoted to Puppy Love-O (O for Olivia) about an hour ago, before that I was Crush-O, before that I was Attraction-O, and next comes True Love-O. There's various other's in your head as well, like Crush-K (K for Kelsey), or Attraction-S (S for Sally); but I am the majority shareholder. I was such a cute little-"

"_Ahem!"_ Pessimism half coughed. _"Back on topic please."_

"Ahh yes, sorry about that," Puppy Love began as she blushed with embarrassment. "As you said, Pessimism and I more or less intended to put on a little act on for you to get you up and running again; no one in your head profits from you dying. The plan had been for me to come in and persuade you out of suicide and the whole good verses evil sketch… that was until HE showed up."

"**Well, since all of this has been a façade; I am leaving,"** the eerie Cloudman declared angrily and vanished.

Puppy Love scowled and gave the area where the Cloudman had been the finger; Jacen laughed in amusement; sure it wasn't actually Olivia giving the finger, but he'd take what entertainment he could get at this point. "That guy…err… entity… is bad news," she said with disdain. "Neighborhood hasn't done anything but go downhill since he showed up."

Pessimisms nodded in approval. "_Ain't it the truth?_"

"What part of me did he represent?" Jacen asked.

"He doesn't represent anything, as such… he--he's different," she replied with a trace of fear.

"Different how?"

The door opened partially and Sally poked her head into the room. "You say something?" she asked with concern.

Jacen stared at the IDF Captain. "No… Umm did you hear me say anything else?" he asked with concern.

She shook her head. "Nope, I've been sitting outside the door since I walked out; haven't heard so much as a peep from you." Sally eyed Jacen suspiciously. "Or did I miss something?"

"No," Jacen replied quickly. "… Umm, Sally?"

"What's up?"

"Im sorry…," said the troubled leader quietly, unable to meet Sally's gaze as he remembered the way he had treated her earlier, "About before; you didn't deserve that."

Sally smiled warmly at him. "Don't worry about it. You weren't yourself, though I'm happy to say that you are now." Her head began to recede out of view, but then popped back in. "We leave in twenty, that going to be enough for you?"

He waved his hand dismissively. "Nah, ten minutes is fine," Jacen replied. Sally withdrew, closing the door behind her yet again. _What just happened_? he asked himself, _I remember hearing somewhere that dreams are the brain's way of processing information, but that wasn't a dream, and even if that were the case, where did the Cloudman come from?_

Forcing himself to sift through the bizarre hallucination, Jacen began to put together the puzzle. _Puppy Love is from my revelation about Olivia earlier_, he rationalized; _and Pessimism… Pessimism is…well that's just part of my personality. So what does that leave; what am-_

"Jacen, we gotta go, NOW!" Sally's voice yelled urgently from the other room.

* * *

Sally closed the door behind her as she leaned back into the room and looked at the other seven IDF: six of them sat in a corner arguing rather noisily about a card game while Brett sat by himself, silently mourning the loss of his friend.

Seeing that they where occupied, Sally sank against the wall and buried her face in her hands. A minute ago she had told Jacen that she hadn't heard him saying anything; it had been a barefaced lie. In reality, she had heard the whole conversation as Jacen talked and replied to people who weren't there. For ten minutes she had listened in horror as the unstable leader teetered on the brink of insanity, unable to stop listening and fearful of confronting him until finally she had gotten to the point where she couldn't stand to hear another word.

The Jacen that Sally had seen when she interrupted him had been totally different from the Jacen that she had seen ten minutes earlier. As relieved as she had been at the dramatic improvement, she was also skeptical. _Who goes from being drunk with grief to calm and collected in ten minutes? It's not natural._

Sally rested her head against the wall, trying to determine their next course of action. Officially the decision was what she had told everyone in the alley, however, as she sat resting against the wall, Sally wondered if that was the smartest idea. If Jacen was in fact better, then she would certainly stick with the current plan, but was Jacen really better or had he just bottled up the emotions to be opened at a later date? The latter of the two looked to Sally like a problem just waiting to happen; she could imagine him loosing control during a fight, and it would be dangerous for Jacen and everyone around him. _Seems like there's nothing **but**_ _bad choices…_

Something faint sounded in the distance, reminding Sally of a chain of firecrackers. She had always been a bit of a pyro; back before she enrolled in Bestine Academy she would always bring fireworks back from summer road trips and set them off on a beach on the fourth of July. One year a police officer had caught her in the act of shooting off bottle rockets at a crowded beach, but instead of arresting her "My daughter really liked that blue one you just did" and walked away. Needless to say, Sally launched a lot of blue bottle rockets that night.

Intrigued by the noise, she got up and looked out a small window overlooking the main street. "I wonder why we keep seeing more creatures as we get closer to the recruitment office," Sally mused aloud as creatures migrated past, heading towards the center of town.

"Have you already forgotten what Mark said?" Brett asked coldly, not bothering to look up or move.

"He said that the moan from the creature in the alley called the others… oh so you're saying that the creatures are on the scent of someone," she speculated, agreeing with his reasoning. "Well at least we know that someone is alive out there."

The IDF Captain waited for a moment for Brett to respond, but he remained silent. Finding it evident that he was done, Sally turned back to the window and pulled it open, straining her hearing to catch the firecracker sound over the collective moans. That quickly became unnecessary because whereas the noise had nearly been audible to begin with, it was now noticeably faster and more frequent to the point where explosive barks overlapped one another. _Those aren't fireworks_, she realized in a strange mixture of relief and horror, _those are guns, lots of guns._

"Jacen, we gotta go, NOW!" Sally yelled as she pounded her fist on the wall and then turned her attention to the others. All of them except for Brett hadn't noticed the gunshots but they certainly had overheard their captain yelling at the wall and were at the moment looking at her expectantly.

One of them, Jay, looked at his watch, then to the cards he was holding, and then glanced back up at Sally. "We still have fifteen minutes," he stated matter-of-factly. The other players looked at him wearily and those nearest to Jay scooted away from him as fast at they could.

Sally scowled at the boy's callousness. There where a number of things that she had learned about Jay throughout the morning that she didn't like, the top of the list currently being the fact that he could play cards when Mark had died little more than an hour ago. Sure, the other five where playing too, but they weren't _enjoying_ it, nor did they dare to challenge her authority. "Jay, what the he-" she began angrily.

"Come on! Just let me finish this hand," he whined. Sally clenched her fists in anger, she knew that in truth the IDF wasn't a real military, and those in it weren't real soldiers, but hell would have to freeze over before she let anyone challenge her. One day the IDF would become a real military, but for that to happen they had to at least act like one. She began to approach him, but stopped when she saw Brett sit up from his solitary corner. He was a Sergeant in the IDF, that meant that the others answered to him and he answered to Sally. Trusting that he would take care of it, Sally stood back.

"Jay has four of a kind; quad tens," Brett said in a neutral tone, having a perfect view over the boy's shoulder. All the other players folded instantly; Jay threw his cards on the ground angrily. "Good Jay… Now get you're insubordinate ass off the ground and get ready. We are going _now_!"

Heavy footsteps shook the floor from the other room, and moments later Jacen emerged through the door, clanking loudly now that his armor was back on. "What's going on?" he asked.

Sally explained the situation briefly and finished just as the others were up and ready to go. She led the group into the hall preparing to usher them up the nearest flight of stairs; the apartment building was four stories high and they were currently on the second; they needed to get to the top . The group made their way to the stairwell that they had used earlier and continued up, progressing slowly past the third and fourth floor despite the near crippling lack of light. Abruptly the stairwell ended and Sally walked right into a cold, smooth wall; it made a metallic pinging sound.

"Damn it!" she cursed through the dark as pain shot through her nose. Someone bumped into her, pressing her against the wall. The figure tried to back up but then someone ran into him, restarting the event. Pretty soon, everyone was pushed up against someone. Sally heard the sound of thousands of little titanium rings clanking against one another as the figure grunted and braced one arm on each side next to her head against the smooth wall, relieving a little of the pressure on her. "Ohh Jacen," she whispered teasingly in amusement, "What would Olivia think?"

Instantly Sally had a lot more room, as she had expected. "Ok everyone back up and give me some space to feel around," she ordered.

"You can feel around me anytime," a voice towards the back called in a suggestive manner. _That was unexpected, _she thought, _I guess he picked up momentum from my Olivia comment_. In a rather unusual occurrence Sally felt her face warm slightly and gained a new appreciation for the darkness that enveloped her.

-**Wham**- The noise of the strike echoed in the stairwell as someone lightly hit the loudmouth on the back of the head. "Shut the hell up Danny," another voice said from nearby the first, who moments later added: "Wait… who's Olivia?"

Forgetting the mission, Jacen began to perform damage control. Sally ignored the hollow threats that Jacen began to utter in the general direction of the troops and placed her hands over the smooth surface of the wall: it was cool to the touch. Experimentally Sally knocked on it, and it made a hollow metallic sound. She began to run her hand up and down the metal surface until she found what she was looking for: a doorknob.

Turning the knob, she pushed against the heavy door and swung it open, bathing herself and the others in the strong light of the early afternoon sun. Instantly she got a headache as her eyes took in way too much light. On instinct she closed them and waited as others behind her had similar experiences.

Using her right hand as a visor, Sally opened her eyes partially and took a step onto the roof. The ground under her feet made irritating grinding noises as she walked over masses of synthetically white rocks; it reminded Sally of nails scratching over a chalkboard. _I hate that noise, _she thought,_ I hate it so much!_

Hearing that clatter of rocks grinding together, Sally noticed the absence of another sound entirely. The gunshots had stopped. "Oh shit!" she exclaimed and looked back at the others who where clumsily emerging onto the rooftop. "Come on, we have to hurry."


	14. First Contact

**A/N:** readers be warned that the F-bomb is used once in this chapter, there was really no other word to put without losing effect.

Also I am in the process of developing a new story, the first chapter or two should be out within a week or so. I encourage all of those who are reading this to give it a look when it comes out; don't worry though, Heirs wont suffer from it.

Update(4/10/07): The second story may need to wait due to specific circumstances.

* * *

**Chapter 14: First Contact**  
(May 4th --- 29 day after Outbreak) 

_We are in such deep shit_, Warrant Officer Nate Walters told himself as he wearily hefted Davis's M-14 rifle. Mostly wooden, it rested against his shoulder like a morbid baseball bat. Nate felt bad about taking Davis's weapon, but he had needed to save what ammo he had left in his own MP-5. Sparing a quick glance at what _had _been Davis, he knew that the dead man wouldn't be needing his weapon anyways. Davis had fallen shortly after Stevens as the men had retreated up the stairs. They had lost the battle, and were now separated from Captain Mendez and the others, who had also been forced to retreat. Nate was still in touch with Mendez through his short wave radio headset, but that was all.

Another demon appeared at the bottom of the stairs and moaned deeply in a way that seemed to say, "Oh, look! It's prey!" Of course, the idea that this thing could be intelligent was ridiculous. _And horrible,_ he added as the thing fell back after coming across the barricade, which wasn't much: a hardwood table, a few chairs, and a desk or two, but it got the job done.

Nate stood up and made his way to the room where two of the three remaining members of Walter's group were heatedly discussing about whether they would choose food or sex if given a choice; both things had been in very short supply since the outbreak.

"… and then I would fuck her while I had the buffalo wing-"

"That's pretty messed up Marquis," Nate interrupted before things got raunchy, "did a piece of fried chicken violate you when you where a kid or something?"

Jim Marquis stopped humping the air and looked up at the warrant officer. "Ha-ha-ha," Jim said bitterly, "if you were any funnier I think I would have lost a lung by now." From behind Jim, Mike Hendrickson gave Nate a thumps up as he tried to muffle his own laughter; the civilians had always been amazed by how well he and the others coped with what was supposed to be the end of the world. Nate didn't find that surprising in the least, since over the years they had seen all sorts of carnage and death. Of course none of those situations had been as bad as this.

**-Thud-Thud-Thud-**

Nate's ears perked up as what sounded like heavy footsteps reverberated through the hallway. "You two did clear the upper floors, right?" he asked in a whisper, quietly placing the M-14 against the wall and taking out the comparatively small MP-5; it had little more than ten rounds left, but it would do.

"Course' we did," Mike replied in a hushed voice, gripping his ancient model 1894 Winchester over his shoulder as he instinctually took his place against the wall next to the doorway. Jim fell in behind Mike and they both flashed Nate a thumbs up.

The footsteps slowly got closer, but something seemed off to Nate; they were unnatural for a demon in that they sounded as if they had a normal rhythm; demons usually limped or wobbled stiffly.

Dismissing the seemingly pointless observation to the back of his mind, Nate said a silent prayer and burst into the hallway, followed by Mike and Jim. Through the rush of adrenaline it took him a moment to register the sight in front of him. First he noticed the colorful clothing that they all wore. C_ivilians_… Then he saw the glistening swords they all held. _Armed civilians_, he corrected himself as he finally looked at their faces.

"Kids! What the hell are a bunch of kids doing here?" Jim blurted out as the stern looks of the new group turned to those of indignation.

"You two stay back and stay quite," Nate hissed as he approached the new group of people; he couldn't disagree with Jim's assessment, but it was a bad way to start a dialogue with someone who could be trying to decide whether to help you or rob you blind.

As he approached, a young girl stepped out to meet him followed by an older boy in a full suit of chain mail. _What_…_the_…_hell_. From five feet away Nate stopped and looked the two kids over; he couldn't help but notice that they hadn't put away their swords and that there was a lot of tension in the air. He followed the girl's gaze and found she was looking expectantly at his gun, which he had subconsciously trained on her head, as indicated by the red dot between her eyes.

"Well, I've made a decision," Nate began after half a minute of tense silence, "you are not Vikings."

The girl gave Nate an inquiring glance. "Care to explain that little gem of wisdom?"

Nate lowered his weapon and signaled Jim and Mike to do the same. "Well I just can't imagine a pretty lady like yourself going around raping and pillaging," he explained with a smirk.

Her features softened considerably and she put her sword back in its sheaf, the chain mail-boy and everyone behind them followed in kind. "Are you Captain Mendez?" the girl asked.

"Nope, I'm second in command Warrant Officer Nate Walters. Pleasure to meet you, little missy," he replied casually.

The girl glared at Nate, feeling as if he was talking down to her. "I would prefer if you call me Sally… or _Captain,_ if you feel so inclined."

"Captain of what, the honor roll?" Jim called out. _You idiot, _he yelled mentally_, we are trying to make friends, not get disemboweled by a little girl and a bunch of her friends._

Sally began to reach for a pouch by her hip before the bodyguard put a hand on her shoulder and shook his head. "Are all your men like him?" she asked angrily, "Because if they are-"

"Please ignore Jim; he is so busy fantasizing about having sex while he eats buffalo wings that he isn't thinking straight," Nate replied dismissively.

"Hey! That's not- mmmfffffuh"

Mike covered Jim's mouth. "Yes, please excuse his rudeness," Mike apologized, "it's been a rough month." Finished speaking, Mike dragged his comrade back into the room they had come from, leaving Nate to handle things.

Nate stroked his beard nervously and waited a moment to allow Sally the chance to regain her composure. "As inappropriately as he put it, my colleague does bring up a valid point; what exactly are you a Captain of?"

"I am a Captain of the Intrepid Defense Force," she replied proudly and then added, "Where is Captain Mendez?"

_Well I'll give her one thing, she is persistent_. "Captain Mendez is currently stuck in the basement with the civilians, but I can put him through over the radio if you wish," Nate conceded.

"That would be acceptable… wait! Where are you going?" she yelled as Nate began to walk away.

Nate stopped and looked over his shoulder. "I'm getting you a headset, be back in a second," he replied and continued forward, disappearing as he went down the stairwell.

* * *

Although Sally couldn't see Nate at the moment, she could clearly hear the warrant officer's gun go off and the moans of the creatures downstairs growing noticeably louder. "Don't forget," Jacen whispered to Sally and the others, "I'm supposed to be a guard, so none of that Lord Jacen crap." 

The floor vibrated under Sally's feet as Nate ascended the stairwell in leaps and bounds with a bloody headset in his left hand. "Here you go," Nate began wearily after he used a dirty rag from his pocket to wipe away the blood and handed it to Sally. "Courtesy of the late Sergeant Davis. Now just give me a second to contact Mendez first and then he's all yours."

"Very well," Sally replied, frowning slightly at the still blood soaked headset in her hands.

Nate nodded to her and turned his back to them. Sally tried to listen in on the conversation but could only catch one or two words. A minute later Nate turned back around and pointed to a switch on a wire draping down from the headset itself. "Flick the switch to turn it on."

Ignoring the smell of blood that the device reeked of, Sally hastily put on the headset and activated it. "Captain Mendez can you hear me… Over," she added as an afterthought, trying to remember what the people in the movies would say.

"_I hear you loud and clear."_

"Sir, I'm Captain Sally Bishop of the Intrepi-"

"Her last name is Bishop?" someone behind her asked.

"Apparently," another replied.

Sally covered the microphone with her left hand and shot an angry glare at the group as a whole. "Please excuse the interruption," she continued after everyone fell quiet, "As I was saying, I am Captain Sally Bishop of the Intrepid Defense Force."

"_Pleasure to meet you Sally,"_ the voice paused for a moment and let out a deep sigh. _"You have no idea how relieved I am to hear your voice."_

Hearing the tired tone of the man on the other line, Sally frowned and glanced up at Nate; he looked how Mendez sounded. He was covered in dirt from head to toe, he smelled like a public restroom, and his beard seemed to have twigs embedded into it. _My god_, Sally commented mentally, _these people have really been to hell and back_.

"_Sally… Sally are you still there?"_

"Yes, I'm here," Sally replied. "So Captain, what can we do to be of assistance?"

Mendez waited a moment before replying. _"How many of you are there? Do you have a means of transporting all of us out of here?"_

"There are nine of us… now," she spared a consoling look at Jacen, who had flinched at the statement; "Originally there were twelve, but two had to be sent back to Intrepid and the other died; we don't have transportation, but we did pass a large Fed-Ex truck not too long ago."

"_Ok, we can make this work… Nate you there?"_ Mendez asked. Nate didn't respond but Sally did see the man jump slightly from the spot where he stood overlooking the stairs. _"Damn it Nate, answer me. I know you're eavesdropping."_

"_Sir,"_ the Warrant officer replied over the radio in a defeated voice. Sally sighed in amusement; her initial reaction to Nate and company was decidedly not positive but in the short time since they had met she had already started to warm up to their antics and now realized that it was only natural to be a little off after everything they had been through.

"_Good; now here's what we are need to do…"_

* * *

"Jacen you can't go down there," Sally exclaimed, "I won't let you!" 

Nate coughed impatiently. "Come on now, don't be stubborn. He is your bodyguard, now let him do his job and save us."

Jacen let out a wry smirk and looked over at Sally. "Yeah, Sally, let me do my job," he said mockingly, daring her to challenge him in front of Nate. He didn't like deceiving Mendez and the others but it was necessary to do so until he could prove that he was a capable leader despite being only seventeen.

Sally began to straighten up as if to protest, but stopped herself and nodded wearily. Nate gave Sally a respectful glance and then looked back towards Jacen. "OK kid, tell me the plan again; I want to make sure you remember."

"I am going to wade through the creatures and make my way to the other side of the room where the radio transmitter is set up. Then all I have to do is flip the switch on the microphone and wait for everything else to fall into place."

Nate gave Jacen a reassuring pat on the shoulder. "Good luck kid…" His features softened and in a quiet voice he added, "Don't get killed."

"That's the plan," replied the ruler of Intrepid as he descended the stairwell, flashing Sally a decidedly fake reassuring smile just before disappearing from view.

Jacen's mind was clear and determined as he reached the bottom of the stairs and rounded the corner. That changed when he first set eyes on the mass of creatures standing in the main room. There were hundreds, ten times more than Jacen had ever seen at one time and also the first creatures he had seen since the horrible scene at the diner.

Instinctively he reached for the loosely hanging sword at his side but then released it from his grip, realizing that it would only make things harder. Then Jacen ran, gathering all the momentum he could before he slammed shoulder first into the mass of undead. The stench of rotting flesh nearly overwhelmed him, singing the hairs in his nostrils as he used his arms to pry open a gap.

Almost instantly the creatures began to attack Jacen as he began the slow process of wading to the other side of the room. Pain shot up his arm as one tried to bite him; as much as he may have wished it otherwise, the armor could only protect him from breaking the skin, not preventing pain.

It took Jacen a little less than ten minutes to make it to the halfway point and by that time he could barely feel his left arm. He was also having trouble breathing due to one creature that had landed a hit to his chest; through his almost ten minutes of hell, though, not once had he responded to any attack.

_I can't keep this up,_ Jacen told himself as he felt his body start to weaken. That was when the images started playing out in his head; images of him avenging Mark, images of him fighting back and killing every single creature in the room and outside. _They all deserve to be killed. I should slaughter every single one right now_, Jacen thought irrationally.

The images and thoughts invigorated Jacen, converting his anger and rage into raw energy. During the time this happened, something tugged at the back of his mind, asking to be let in and enticing him with more images of vengeance. Each new blow from the creatures fueled Jacen as he continued on, while at the same time causing the tug to become a little more forceful. Jacen slowly began to forget what he was there to do as he became overwhelmed by an urge to kill.

Then one creature swiped at Jacen's head, causing his legs to buckle; he fell beneath the mass of death and decay. As Jacen lay sprawled face down on the ground, his vision began to clear as a cloudy veil that he hadn't noticed before was lifted from his mind. Suddenly he could think rationally. The first feeling to return was fear, fear that at any moment the creatures would bend over and tear him apart, but they didn't. After a full minute of waiting to embrace death he risked a look up.

Jacen looked up and nearly burst into laughter; the creatures couldn't reach down to get him, since they were packed together in the room as snugly as a can of sardines. _They can't bend down to reach me_, he commented to himself in amusement, subconsciously knowing that this was not the time to be entertained but unable to stop. What he did do was continue on, taking full advantage of his discovery by crawling the rest of the way.

He made it to the transmitter twenty minuets after he began this hellish mission and flipped the switch. _Mission accomplished_, Jacen said to himself but then his smile faded as he realized something._ I have to get away from it now! If I hide under the table then they might knock it over._ Acting on his insight, Jacen dove back into the forest of feet, and waited sprawled on his stomach for the plan to come together.

* * *

**Elsewhere in the center of town:**

"Look for nice cars with fancy rims," Nate informed Communication Sergeant Marquis and Brett; Sally had insisted on accompanying them.

Marquis gave Nate a questioning look. "Why?"

"Umm guys?" Brett asked as he looked over Nate's shoulder, speaking for the first time since they left.

"Just one second kid," Nate said dismissively to Brett before explaining his reasoning to Marquis; "What do you think is more likely to have a very loud sound system? A Cadillac Escalade with spinning chrome rims or-"

"Umm, guys?" Brett interjected in a louder voice.

Nate looked over and glared at the boy for interrupting. "What?" the warrant officer asked with venom in his voice; Brett pointed over Nate's shoulder. Glancing over to the area the boy was pointing at, Nate gaped. "You gotta be joking…," he said, trailing off. After a moment, he sighed heavily and said, "Marquis, get it set up."

Marquis looked at the chosen vehicle astonishment. "But Nate, I mean Sir… its a-"

Nate massaged his forehead in annoyance as he interrupted Marquis. "Yes, Jim, that is an ice cream truck."

* * *

**A/N:** I am having trouble with the 15th chapter and I am having trouble contacting my beta, not their fault though. Also, I would appreciate it if anyone who has been following the story to give me an honest opinion on something: Have any of you noticed a decrease in the amount of physical description? I need to know whether my writing abilities are becoming worse over time or if its just in my head.

Much appreciated


	15. The Great Escape

_I am back!!! Thanks to all those who have not given up on me or did, but came back. This story will go on although I am saddened to announce that my other story that I mentioned previously has been postponed indefinitely, both because I find my writing ability inadequate to do it justice and that I simply do not have the focus for two stories._

_Enjoy, and please review if you have any comments or suggestions._

* * *

**Chapter 15: The Great Escape**  
(May 4th --- 29 day after Outbreak) 

"Ahhhrgh!" Jacen cried incoherently, in pain as one of the creatures stepped on his back. The sudden pressure caused him to cough up a small amount of blood, which he quickly spat to he side.

Everything hurt; well everything except his left arm, which was numb and non-responsive. _I should count my blessings_, Jacen's positive side pointed out. W_ithout the shark suit I would be dead a couple times over_.

His vision began to blur (not that he minded much) and even though the view of the polished floor tiles that filled his field of vision was far from spectacular, it did indicate that he was close to losing consciousness………or dying.

_Lets see, as of my last count __thirty-four__ people died because of me__ and now roughly the same amount are about to be rescued_, he reflected, feeling some consolation in the idea that he had finally made the deaths count. _Regardless_, he added as his consciousness began to fade, _I do hope I wake up_.

The darkness began to take him faster and faster; finally, just before the world went completely dark, Jacen could have sworn that he heard _Pop Goes the Weasel _faintly in the distance.

* * *

**Bum--BaDaDa-DaDaDa--Bum-BaDa-DaDaDa--Bum**

"Shit!" Marquis cursed as he scrambled to shut off the speaker.

**Ba…**

"What the hell was that?" Nate hissed as the music quickly faded and died altogether, glancing around for signs of any demons; there were none in sight, but he hoped that would change soon. "I want moans of the undead, not a rendition of _Pop Goes the Weasel_."

Marquis lifted his head out from under the dashboard. "Look, this isn't an exact art; I'm trying to interface a complex piece of military technology with a fifteen year old ice cream truck," he said, pausing to look at his watch. "Give me another minute, 'kay?"

* * *

"Try it again!" Mike yelled after tweaking the engine for what felt like the hundredth time. 

**Pufffft... Pufffft…**

"Come on," Sally mumbled while anxiously chewing on her hair as the truck's engine struggled to ignite.

**Pufffft... Pufffft… Vroooom**

Sally, Mike, and all the accompanying IDF let out a brief cheer and then continued working. Sally went to the back to help the others unload packages that filled the truck while Mike radioed Mendez to inform him of their progress.

She automatically took her place at the end of one of two chains of IDF. The system was simple and efficient; each chain consisted of four people, two in the car and two on the ground. The person at the beginning of each chain would pick up a package and pass it to the next person in line, then to the next, and finally to the last who would toss it into a pile that became very big very fast.

As they went, Sally noted that boxes labeled "Handle with Care," were, in fact, handled far more harshly than other packages. She attributed this to the occasional shattering sound such packages would make when they where tossed into the pile and figured that, most likely, the boys obtained some amount of gratification from the sounds of destruction.

Ten minutes and dozens of boxes later, they were done; two IDF, namely Jay and Danny, where posted as guards and everyone else was allowed to rest. _Serves them right_, Sally thought with approval, _Jay has been an ass more than once on this trip and Danny's comment in the stairwell was inappropriate... Though I admit it was flattering._

Sally used the sleeve of her shirt to wipe the sweat from her forehead and then sat down against the rear wheel of the truck facing out across the street. It was hard for her to believe that the pile of rubble she was looking at had, only hours ago, been a haven where they had joked and laughed; she briefly entertained the thought of going over to look for Mark's body but dismissed it quickly, knowing all too well that she wouldn't have enough time.

After a few bittersweet moments of silent concentration, Sally heard footsteps and turned to see Mike approaching. "I just finished talking with the Captain. Marquis has rigged the radio to an ice cream truck, that's where the music was coming from, and is now traveling with Nate and your friend to meet us here, though for obvious reasons they have to take back alleys to get here," Mike said wearily as he relaxed against the car.

"The radio will activate in five minutes -we will give it ten minutes to take effect- then Mendez will take out any stragglers and escort the civilians to the truck. If all goes according to plan Nate will get here a little before the rest."

Sally used her left hand to brush her dark hair out of her face and gently tucked it behind her ear. "What about Jacen?" She asked with a hint of accusation as continued to stare forward.

"Jacen, who's tha…," Mike paused mid-sentence, realizing who she meant, "Ohhh, the bodyguard; the Captain said that if he is alive and uninfected then they will make sure he gets here, but in any other scenario he gets a mercy bullet."

_I __never __should__'ve__ let him do that_, Sally told herself angrily as she tightened her fists in frustration. _If he dies the best case scenario would be that I become hated, at worse Intrepid would-_

"Beautiful sunset," Mike commented after half a minute of tense silence, breaking Sally's concentration.

"Under other circumstances I would agree," she replied curtly and then trailed off.

"But?"

Sally let out another deep sigh. "Well, you know that explosion you heard a couple of hours ago?" She waited for Mike to nod and pointed to a mass of rubble across the street. "That was Mark; he sacrificed himself to save the rest of us and in the process killed dozens of those things…… Kinda kills the mood, huh?"

"Thanks for ruining my first sunset in a long time," Mike quipped, sounding more than a little irritated.

"No problem," Sally replied mockingly. Off in the distance the loudest undead moan ever heard began to echo throughout Bestine. Sally stood up as she heard the noise and began to walk away but then stopped and looked over her shoulder. "It would kinda suck for you to have come all this way only to get bitten on the ass while you're appreciating the sunset."

Finished talking, Sally turned and walked around to the back of the truck to get everyone up and ready, leaving Mike with his jaw hanging open. "Did…did I just get burned by a little girl?" he whispered to himself in astonishment.

* * *

Connor walked over to Linda, a general surgeon who was in the process of looking over the injured boy. She was a thin woman with short, curly brown hair tied up in a bun and wore a once white lab coat that was now dotted with numerous coagulated blood stains. Linda had told him that she had had gotten the various stains when she had tried to save a coworker by amputating his leg; the amputation itself had been a success but apparently he had multiple bite wounds. 

"So what's the prognosis?" he asked, looking at the boy over her shoulder.

"Not done yet," Linda replied absently and paused before continuing, all the while still examining the boy. "It's rather hard to get a full list of injuries when he is wearing this armor."

"Why don't you take it off?"

She checked the boy's pupils and, seeming satisfied with the result, stood up and addressed him. "Bad idea, to do so would require unnecessary movement that could very well cause him further harm."

"Makes sense," Connor replied and then added, "So what _can_ you tell me?"

"Well," she began hesitantly, "I am fairly certain that he is not infected, but he does have a moderate concussion. Besides that I know for sure that there are more injuries but cannot determine the type or severity under these conditions."

"Will he live?"

Linda glared at Connor momentarily, visibly upset that she was being forced to make that call with so little information available. "Probably," she replied tersely.

For a moment he considered leaving the kid behind, carrying him would slow down the group. B_ut he also put his life on the line_ _to save a bunch of people he doesn't __even __know._ "Thanks Linda, I'll take it from here."

"Freddie, Ted, get over here," Connor ordered as Linda nodded and walked away.

"So," Ted began as he approached, "are we carrying the kid or giving him one between the eyes?"

"The former," Connor replied in a disapproving tone.

Knowing where this conversation was leading, Ted knelt down and began digging out the collapsible stretcher that he, as medic, was responsible for carrying.

"Well, he's going to be a bitch to carry," Freddie replied after he was brought up to date. "I suppose we owe it to him though."

Connor nodded approvingly. "That we do Sergeant."

Freddie un-slung his rifle and handed it to Connor. " Take my gun," he said, "it only has two rounds in it but it's the only one besides Nate's that has any ammo left, and it won't be of much use to me since I'm carrying the boy."

Freddie walked over to Ted and together they gently lifted the boy onto the stretcher. Despite their care, however, the boy momentarily awoke at the movement and cried out in pain before lapsing back into unconsciousness. To prevent another occurrence of this Ted got out a needle of morphine from his pack and injected it into the boy, then the two took their positions at either end and lifted the stretcher into the air.

"Ok everyone," Connor shouted, turning towards the crowd, "we are leaving. In all likelihood we will be running into some demons, and in that event I will need all of you to remain calm; don't be a hero, let me handle anything that gets in our way. If there are too many we will take an alternate route."

Connor was the first to exit the building. Immediately to the left of the building, no more than fifty feet away there was a scattered group of demons that began to moan and limp towards him. Fortunately they where far enough away to be of little threat and by the time their reinforcements would arrive, he and everyone else would be long gone. _Hopefully_, he added to himself.

Everyone began to file out after Connor in two rows with Ted and Freddie taking up the rear, carrying the kid. The pace was slow; nearly half of the civilians were carrying children on their back and the others, like Linda, carried gear. Conner would have preferred a light sprint or at least speed walking, but he supposed that as long as they were faster than the demons it wouldn't matter much.

They encountered their first problem when they turned a corner and were cut off by a group of demons, not six blocks away from the truck. There were five of them and only two bullets left in Freddie's gun. Connor took aim and fired; the first shot went low and hit one in the chest. He took a deep calming breath, steadied his hands and fired, creating a large hole in the demon's upper forehead just before it fell over. The remaining demons began to moan loudly, now recognizing that food was nearby.

"_Captain! Captain, what was that?"_ Sally cried over the headset.

Connor keyed it off; he couldn't be bothered with voices buzzing around his head right now. _Four left_, he counted, brandishing the carbine like a club. He cautiously began to approach the creatures when someone towards the back of the group yelled for him to wait. He stopped and watched as the group parted to allow Peter to come forward with Suzie on his back and a sword in his hand.

"The... boy's... sword," he panted and handed the weapon to Connor, trying hard to keep his balance with the little girl on his back.

"It's Escaliber!" Suzie added excitedly and then clasped her hands together and pretended to swing an imaginary sword. "Now go hit the mo'sters!"

Connor dropped the carbine, nodded in thanks, and turned towards the demons that had advanced all of ten feet. He ran at the one on the far left and swung the sword in an awkward horizontal slash. The sword imbedded itself where the demon's right shoulder met its neck and held fast. The demon, seemingly unfazed, clawed at the air in an attempt to reach Connor.

He held on to the sword with a death grip, taking advantage of it being stuck and using it as a barrier between him and the demon. Of course, there were three others that had not remained idle during this encounter and were getting dangerously close.

"Get down!" a familiar voice yelled urgently. Connor flung himself to the ground and covered his head with his arms, acting on instincts ingrained into him long ago.

A bullet pierced the air where Connor had been only moments ago; the demon with the sword stuck in it fell over and landed on top of him, pinning Connor to the ground. Five more shots followed in quick succession, each one making a wet smacking noise as penetrated the demons bodies, yet only one more of the Demons fell.

"Damn it!" the same voice yelled in anger, followed by a new, higher pitched war cry as someone ran towards him. Connor uncovered his head and looked up to see an athletic looking young boy, no older than sixteen by his guess, with thick ash colored hair charging towards him with a sword drawn………a sword identical to the one stuck into the demon on top of him.

_A single boy, a gun with ammo, and a familiar __foul-mouthed__ voice_, Connor thought as he mentally pieced puzzle together and then concluded:_M__ust be Nate_. The whole thought process took only a fraction of a second and by the time he had finished it the boy was already swinging at one of the two remaining demons.

The boy slashed directly into the center of its neck, not decapitating it but close enough to immobilize it; the boy thrust his leg at its chest, using the leverage gained to pull the blade free.

Even as the demon fell twitching to the ground the boy was already on the next one. He let go of the sword with his left hand and ran at the creature, his war cry overshadowing the creature's horrible moan. He kept running, getting closer and closer to the demon until he was only inches away and then dug his right foot into the ground and jabbed upward, putting his whole body into the attack. The blade pierced through the soft spot just under the chin and embedding deep into its skull. A small trickle of blood ran down the sword from the wound and pooled around the hilt.

The boy twisted the sword and jerked it free. So mesmerized was Connor by the horrible dance that it took him a moment to see the figure just over the kid's shoulder. "Behind you!" he cried. The boy attempted to duck into a low crouch but lost his footing and fell on his ass instead, narrowly avoiding the demons arm as it attempted to swipe at his head.

_Crap!_ Connor thought and tried to squirm out from under the demon that had him pinned down, but it was no use. All Connor could do was sit and watch.

As the boy attempted to scramble away on his hands and knees the creature began to reach down and it seemed to Connor that the boy was going to die. Then two thick arms emerged below the arms of the demons and held it in a lock; its attention instantly turned to the man who held it captive, biting the air ravenously as it turned its head to the side as far as it could. Its teeth finally caught hold and it jerked its head to the opposite side. "Sonufabitch!" man yelled, slurring the words together.

Connor feared the worst until the creatures face turned back around, revealing a thick patch of red hair in its mouth. The same large hands sank out of sight and then reappeared instantly near the creatures head; they struck like a bolt of lightning, instantly snapping the demon's neck. The demon fell to the side, revealing a very pissed and now mostly beardless Nate.

Connor heard footsteps coming from behind him, followed by a large pressure being relieved from his poor back. "Took you long enough Marquis," Connor said in mock anger.

"You're welcome."

The Captain bent over the demon that had pinned him and jarred the sword free and walked over to Nate, who was mourning his beard, and the boy who was methodically performing the finishing blows to the paralyzed, but still alive demons. Nate was rubbing his chin as he approached. "Damn thing bit my beard off," Nate cursed, angrily holding out his middle finger with such intensity that it looked as though fire would shoot out of it. "I liked that beard."

"Stop bitching, Walters, you're only twenty two; it'll grow back fast with all that youthful energy you have pent up," Connor snickered with a sly grin. He looked back at the group and waved them forward.

* * *

The engine groaned and fought to accelerate with all the excess weight forced upon it. Nate sat tensely with his feet dangling out the back of the car as it began to speed up. The experience was a bit unnerving for him because the truck was so full that the suspension was bottomed out, leading to an exceedingly bumpy ride that threatened to throw him off. For support he gripped onto a small bar protruding out of the side wall, hanging onto it like his life depended on it, which in a sense, it did. 

Sally or Captain Sally, Nate still couldn't decide which to call her, was silently sitting next to him with her legs hanging over the back as well. She'd been rather distraught when she had seen the bodyguard being put in the truck on a stretcher but Linda had assured her that he was, not infected and would most likely live. After that she had continued to press the issue until the Captain had asked why she was so worried about a bodyguard; that shut her up fast. Since then she had been mostly quite as everyone was loaded into the truck.

Despite its audible protest, the truck had managed to level out its speed at 35 mph although it occasionally let out worrisome sputtering noises. The speed was a little faster than Nate would have liked, especially with the coming transition from paved roadway to a gravel one.

When the truck hit the gravel road Nate instinctively believed that someone had shot out one or all of the tires. Time seemed to slow down after that. He turned his head and immediately saw Sally staring at him, her vibrant sandblasted green eyes wide in terror; she was slipping. The brief eye contact seemed to go on forever, but slowly time sped up again and she began to slide off.

Using his left hand to anchor himself to the truck, Nate reached out with his right arm and scooped her up and onto his lap. _It's the only way to ensure she doesn't fall off again_ he unsuccessfully tried to convince himself. _H__er eyes sure are mesmerizing though_. Nate shook his head, trying to rid such thoughts from his mind.

"Thank you," she managed to squeak out eventually, then moments later added in a more controlled tone and slightly amused tone, "Umm... What happened to your face?"


	16. Grief and Confessions

**Chapter 16: Grief and Confessions**  
(May 4th --- 29 day after Outbreak)

Brushing away the dirt and dust that had accumulated on her skirt, Kelsey stood up and surveyed the woods for any sign of movement. _Still nothing, _she thought with a worried sigh as she looked at her watch; it was nearing 8:30. Six hours had passed since the runners drove up in the police car. On a whim Kelsey looked up and over at Dave, who sat tensely, reading a copy of _Sun-Tzu: The Art of War_.

"Hey Dave!" she called to draw his attention, "where are the runners that came back? I would have expected them to come up to wait with us."

"Trust me," Dave said, shutting the warped old library book and looking up at her, "if it was up to them they would be right up here with us."

"What do you mean?"

"Mrs. Lipinski has them in quarantine," Dave replied with just the slightest hint of amusement. "She heard the news they brought back, which I thought was kinda a given, and set up a new quarantine protocol where by everyone who leaves Intrepid for an extended period of time must be quarantined until they are checked for bite marks."

Kelsey nodded silently in approval but bitterly added to herself, _It__ would have been nice of her to inform me or Olivia__. It's not like we're the acting leaders or anything._

Dave went back to reading his book and Kelsey went over to see how Olivia was holding up. She found the other woman leaning over a railing that had been put up only a week and a half ago to keep people from accidentally falling off the roof.

She was wearing baggy purple sweat pants and a red windbreaker; in Kelsey's opinion the mix both complimented and conflicted with her personality, in the sense that the bagginess of it reflected her shy and self conscious nature but at the same time the colors were bolder than her usual earth toned attire.

"I bet they will be back soon," Kelsey said in a forced optimistic tone as she leaned over next to her and looked up at the moon shining bright overhead. Olivia didn't respond.

_Time to bring out the big guns,_ Kelsey decided. "You know," she began teasingly with an impish grin starting to form, "my grandpa once told me that it is customary for soldiers returning from war to be greeted by a tireless night... If you know what I mean."

Olivia stood perfectly still for a moment as the implication sank in and then, like a dam bursting, her cheeks reddened and it began to spread throughout her face until she resembled the color of a cherry. "M-me... Me and Jacen...," Olivia stammered and looked at the ground with such intensity that Kelsey wondered if it might spontaneously combust.

Kelsey put a hand on Olivia's shoulder and shook it gently. "Olivia... Olivia it was a joke."

"You have a perverted mind!" Olivia said in an accusing yet good-natured voice, drawing courage from her inner Melissa.

"Maybe I do," Kelsey said in a whimsical voice, pausing to take a blue scrunchie from around her wrist and tie her bright red hair back in a pony tail, "Or maybe I just wanted to-"

**-Beep- -Beep- -Beep-**

Kelsey and Olivia surveyed the surrounding woods for the origin and quickly spotted a pair of bright headlights. As quickly as they could they all ran from the roof and made their way to the gym.

* * *

"One moment sir, I'll ask," Connor said into his headset and then bumped his leg up and down a few times to get Sally's attention. 

Sally looked over her shoulder. "You know, a tap on the shoulder would have sufficed."

"Can't," Nate replied gruffly, "I'm using one arm to keep your tiny ass from falling out of the truck and the other to make sure that my big ass doesn't fall out." Sally's face flushed a little bit at being reminded that she has been sitting on Nate's lap for the better part of a half hour; one part of her, the more mature part, resented the necessity while another got a sort of thrill out of sitting on an attractive albeit filthy man's lap.

"Whatever," she said nonchalantly. "So what does Mendez want?"

"The Captain's spotted the school a couple of miles up ahead; he wants to know what to do when we get there."

"Circle around back once we are a mile out," she decided after a moment. "Ever since the outbreak there has been a couple dozen creatures out front, so we mostly use the gym entrance out back. Once we get there I'll give the pass signal for them to open up, and they should be waiting."

Nate relayed the information to Mendez, using the term demon instead of creatures. That irritated Sally; just like the incident at the police car earlier, it just didn't seem right. _T__hey __were__ people__ damn it!_

Once he was done relaying the instructions Nate tilted his head to the side in confusion. "Pass signal… it seems kinda excessive, don't ya' think?"

_It's not his fault,_ she rationalized,_ hell he has a right to say whatever he wants after all the crap he's been through_. "It would be excessive if it was only for the creatures, but it was, in fact, a protective measure against you; initially we thought you might be bandits so we set it up so that anyone who doesn't knock on the door in the right pattern won't be let in."

"What is the pattern?"

"Rice-a-roni," she said cheerfully as childhood memories bubbled up.

"What the hell is that?"

Sally shrugged and explained, "Some sort of food; never tried it but the pattern is a jingle about the food that came up the TV a lot when I was a kid."

"You still are a kid."

She glared at him, but found it hard to hold it with her currently inappropriate giddy mood. "Anyway, it went like this," she started bobbling her head from side to side and waving her index fingers in unison. ''………Rice-a-roni, the San-Francisco treat."

Nate stared at her with a worried look. "Are... Are you feeling ok?"

Sally's face reddened in anger, thinking he was making another joke. "That's the last time I share a beloved childhood memory with you!" she said fiercely and then looked away; outside Sally could just barely see the school as the truck drove around. Mendez honked the horn a few times to announce their arrival.

"Sorry," Nate said apologized as the truck's bleating horn faded, "I wasn't trying to make fun of you... I've seen a lot of tough guys crack after long periods of intense stress, and generally they all showed random mood swings..."

"Keep going," Sally said encouragingly, shifting her body to the side so that she could look at him.

Nate sighed. "I just put together the facts. You ain't battle hardened -_yet_- and you are singing about food while your boyfriend is hurt."

"He is not my boyfriend!"

"Come on! I saw the look in your eye when he volunteered for that suicide mission," Nate rolled his eyes. "No one cares about their bodyguard that much."

Sally's eyes narrowed. "Fine, He was not my bodyguard; you happy now?"

"Umm… yes?"

She looked away indignantly. "But he was certainly not my boyfriend; he's too much of a bleeding heart for my taste."

"So if he wasn't your bodyguard or your boyfriend then-"

"Later!"

The truck screeched to a halt and began to drive in reverse towards the gym, giving Sally a full view the school, and, more importantly, the gym doors; _almost__ home_, she thought happily.

Within a minute the truck was only feet away from the doors. Sally pried herself from Nate's hold and jumped out of the truck. She ran up to the door and knocked the rice-a-roni signal on the door. At first nothing happened and she feared that no one was listening, but then the doors erupted inwards. Two rows of IDF came marching out holding all sorts of improvised weapons, forming a wide semicircle around the truck.

"Impressive," Mendez commented as he, Mike, and Marquis got out of the front of the truck. Nate met up with them while Sally and her IDF began helping all the civilians off the truck and carrying what supplies they had brought with them.

The last people off the truck were the two men who carried Jacen and a civilian doctor who insisted on staying with him. Sally consented and followed them inside with Mendez, Nate, Mike, and Marquis following in tow.

The interior of the gym came as somewhat of a shock to Sally; she had expected the IDF, but three makeshift tents made of hastily woven blankets and shower curtains came as a surprise to her. In front of one tent she could see Brett and her other IDF standing in line. _What the hell is all thi-_

Sally's thought where interrupted by a shrill cry coming from the other side of the gym. She looked over to see a short girl wearing purple pants and a red jacket sinking to the ground in tears. A taller girl who stood next to her called over two IDF from the hallway and had them lead the girl out of the room.

"What's going on?" Dave bellowed, as he ran towards her from around one of the tents, followed by a teacher who looked to be in her mid twenties. He stopped in front of Sally and silently watched as the teacher went over to look at Jacen.

She began speaking with the doctor rapidly in medical jargon. "We're taking him to the nurse's office," the woman announced after she finished with the doctor. They both took over carrying Jacen and then rushed out the adjacent door while two IDF held it open for them.

Dave watched Jacen as he was carried out of the room, agony visible on his face, and then turned back towards Mendez. "I suppose the show must go on," he sighed. "Let me introduce myself: I'm Dave Richards, General of the Intrepid Defense Force… So which of you is Captain Mendez?"

* * *

She smothered her head deeply into the pillow for what felt like the millionth time. Olivia had stopped counting the moments where she had cried into this very pillow. The moments spanned over the course of several years, and, as a result, the pillow's once pristine, white color was faded and yellowed by her tears. They flowed from the corner of her eyes and became absorbed by the material, as if the drops were her grief taken physical form, and her pillow its home. 

The familiar smell brought with it memories of the other times the pillow had taken her tears, times of despair. Olivia began to remember the first time she had cried into the pillow, a little less than three years ago when her best friend had betrayed her... _No, not betrayed,_ she corrected bitterly, _he would have had to have actually been a real friend at one point to be able to call what he did a betrayal! _Olivia forced that memory back into her subconscious; she didn't like thinking about her life during eighth grade, about him.

The door made a clicking noise as the lock was turned and it opened slowly, making a creaking noise. Hearing the noise, Olivia looked up to see a tall, slender figure stroll in, carrying a lantern that dimly illuminated the dark room; the figure sat down on the adjacent bed and placed the lantern on a nearby nightstand, turning a knob to feed the flame.

"How are you holding up?" the figure asked cautiously as Olivia's pupils constricted to compensate for the sudden abundance of light. But even before she could see clearly, Olivia knew who it was.

Olivia glanced at the mirror; her eyes where bloodshot and her usual lightly tanned cheeks had become swollen and pale. As if to add insult to injury she found that she also had a runny nose as well as hair as untamed as the Amazons'. "No…nn-not w-well," she managed to reply in between sobs, picking up a stray sock from the floor and using it to wipe her nose.

Melissa shook her head understandingly and walked to her dresser. "Olivia, Olivia, Olivia… what are we going to do with you?" she said in a motherly tone as she pulled out a pair of checkered boxers and a massive navy blue t-shirt with NYPD inscribed on it; specks of dust, ingrained into her clothing from the day's training classes, fell to the floor as she began to undress. Halfway through pulling on the boxers Melissa stopped, noticing Olivia was glancing at her.

"What?"

Olivia surfaced back into reality. "S-sorry," she apologized, bowing her head slightly. "I've just never seen that shirt before." The words caused Melissa to freeze as she glanced down at the shirt she had pulled from the depths of her dresser; for just an instant Olivia though she saw a blush rise to her friend's cheeks.

"You are such a weird girl," Melissa replied teasingly moments later, draping the shirt over her shoulder. "One moment you are crying your heart out for your boss who, may I remind you, you claim to have no romantic involvement with… and now you're criticizing my sleepwear. So, what is your deal?" she finished, giving Olivia a quizzical look as she placed her hands on her hips.

"I don't know…," Olivia said as her tears began to come faster, "I-I know that I shouldn't be crying like this just because of Jacen… it's just everything!"

"Like what?"

"Like you!" Olivia shot back, verbally knocking Melissa off guard. "I envy you more than you will ever know; I envy the way you look, the way you act, the way that you can stand in front of someone with nothing but boxers on and not give a shit… and you know what? I hate myself for it!"

Olivia broke down into incomprehensible sobs and dug her face back into her pillow. Melissa put her shirt on and sat down next to her and rested a hand on her friends shoulder reassuringly while she waited for Olivia to calm down. "I'm sorry Olivia, I never knew you felt so bad about this," Melissa said sadly a few minutes later after Olivia had quieted.

"That's just it," Olivia said as she lifter her head up and turned on her side, "I never used to feel like this before! It's just that I had never actually gotten so close to any boy before Jacen… given; it really wasn't really that close compared to most other people, but it was close for me. Then, when I saw them carrying him in, I imagined what it would be like if he died… I would be stuck this way foreve-"

She stopped cold and her face contorted in horror. "Oh god! I wasn't crying for him, I was crying for what losing him would mean for me; I'm a monster," Olivia declared, finishing in a low whisper.

Melissa enveloped her best friend in a hug. "You're a good person Olivia; maybe that's part of it but it certainly not all of it," she whispered soothingly into her friends ear. "I know that you care about him. Now get some sleep, you need it." Gently Melissa tucked her in, lifted the cover off of the lantern and blew the flame out.

* * *

"So, Mrs. Bishop," Connor began as he took a seat on the laminated wood flooring of the gym, now wearing a pair of blue jeans and a muscle shirt, "I believe that you have some explaining to do… especially since we where so kind as to keep our mouths shut about you, you know… lying." 

Mendez sat perfectly still and waited for her to answer; it was just her and him at the moment; everyone else save Nate was still being checked. The process of doing a full body search of more than forty people had proven to a long and tedious task and was further hindered by the fact that there were only three people working at it; so far around three fourths of those present had been searched and given a fresh pair of clothes. _Still,_ Sally thought anxiously, _I feel cornered._

"Yes...," Sally began nervously, feeling more like a school girl than an IDF Captain. "Well I-"

"Anyone hungry?" Nate asked enthusiastically as he walked over cradling three hotdogs in his arms. He passed one to Connor and one to Sally and then sat down; Sally noticed with amusement that Nate was out of his uniform as well, now wearing a green shirt and a pair of shorts that where much too... Short.

Connor took a small bite out of his hot dog and swallowed. "Mmm, this is the best hotdog I've ever had, hands down!"

"You gotta be joking," Sally exclaimed, almost choking on a piece of hers. "This is cafeteria food man! _Cafeteria _food!"

"Trust me, Mrs. Bishop, when I say that, compared to the MRE's we have been eating for some time now, this hot dog tastes like it was made by God," Connor said ruefully as he swallowed the last of his hotdog, sounding as if he was already trying to forget the last month of his life.

Nate swallowed the last of his food enthusiastically. "So," he said, pointing at Sally, "she spilled the beans yet?"

Mendez shook his head. "I believe she is just about to get to that; isn't that right Mrs. Bishop?"

She nodded slowly and then let out a large sigh. "First off you must understand that there was and is no way to know if you have secret agendas and _furthermore_ we wanted to make sure that you would not try to take over when you found out that the leader of Intrepid is..."

"Go on."

"...The leader of Intrepid is a seventeen year old boy," she said meekly, mentally preparing for the verbal bombardment from the two; it never came.

Nate and the Captain looked at each other and seemed to connect the dots simultaneously. "That kid wasn't you're bodyguard, he was your goddamn king!"

"Well not our king exactly," Sally began, "he doesn't have an official title, though most who don't know him personally call him Lord Jacen; he hates i-"

"Why?" Mendez asked in a hushed voice. Sally looked down at the ground, feeling too ashamed to make eye contact. From the moment Jacen volunteered she had known that she should not have let him go.

"He wanted to... No, he thought it was necessary to prove to you that he was a capable leader…"

_I wonder; did he do it?_ She asked herself as they looked at each other in silence, _did his bravery win them over... Or did his carelessness lose us a powerful ally?_


End file.
